Hook, Line, Sinker

I've been thinking lately about beginnings, and endings. Many of my favorite books I remember via their beginnings and endings, and I picked up more than a few of them sheerly through becoming hooked on the first line.


The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

The wheel of time has always held a special place in my heart. I remember once, during the peak of my reading prowess, I read two in one night in high school (slightly over 2100 pages) before going to school the next morning (biology lab, 7:30). Despite this beginning being slightly overdone - Jordan does not alter it throughout the series beginnings - it has still stuck with me as a moving entrance into an epic saga. It was also one of the first high fantasy series that I read.

This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

I've always had a little soft spot for Vonnegut, even though he's a tad vulgar at times. Though I may enjoy the beginning of Cad's Cradle even more than this one.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I've always really loved this introduction as something truly mythical. It is a mystical entrance into a divine work of art - our world.

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

I love Neil Gaiman, so it comes as no surprise that the beginning of Graveyard Book (one of my favorites of his novels) has a chill and incredible beginning. 

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a fantastic satire and comedy, and the beginning certainly did not let me down. I still read sections of this book when I see it lying on my shelf, forlornly, and it never gets old.

I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased.

Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky is not his best work, but I do still think the beginning immediately captures your attention. He knows how to develop characters like no other author I've ever read, though I've not even read all his stuff, someday I hope to.

Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

This one is cheating, since it is a poem and not quite a story. Though perhaps it is a story after all... 

The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

However irreverent, Douglas Adams never fails to amuse me.

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

Oh, CS Lewis.

Walk any path in Destiny's Garden, and you will be forced to choose, not once but many times. The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's Garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness.

Season of Mists have one of my favorite beginnings of any of the Sandman graphic novels. This section continues further, and it is splendidly crafted.



I've been contemplating beginnings quite a bit, in stories and life. Sometimes, we fear them, though perhaps not so much as endings. Many endings are just beginnings in disguise, though the unknowing can be frightening. I'm walking my way through Destiny's Garden right now, making choices and turning along the hedges and vines - sometimes there seems not to be a path at all that I follow, just an imagined destination. Who knows where I will end up. 
I contemplate beginnings because I'm seeing endings, though they frighten me not. I've read some interesting books, lately, and many have had their own interesting hooks and I've swallowed line, sinker, pole on others. I also really like the beginning to Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, though that book is hilarious in its entirety. And the beginning of Name of the Wind, but that takes an entire prologue.