American Book Review publishes their choice of 100 Best First Lines from Novels. Melville's "Call me Ismael" comes in at number one (no big surprise); the rest are canonical classics from the last 150 years or so, ranging from Dickens' "It was the best of times" to Gibson's "The sky above was the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." For the most part, there's more of an emphasis on best lines from critically praised novels (Heller's "It was love at first sight," from Catch-22, number 59 in the list, is not in itself alarmingly innovative except in the context of the full work).
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Posted by johndanseven at February 3, 2006 11:31 PM