mizzycub
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What are your favourite opening and closing lines to books you have read, and why? Needless to say, this thread will contain spoliers. Read at your own risk!
My favourite opening line is this:
It is such a simple line, so simple that you don't pick up on just how strange it is until you have gone a few lines down and then you just end up thing "...wait a minute? Did that say what I think it did?". It holds much of the feeling of the entire book.
As for closing lines, I think I'll have to go for this.
It isn't often that a book manages to end on a climax, as opposed to the calm down after the action, but with this one line, and the build up to it, Casino Royale manages to pull it off. It is a simple closing yet it manages to pull the book to a perfect close. It shoes just how much of a cold hearted bastard the James Bond character from the books can be.
The best ending overall for me is the last of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy of five, Mostly Harmless. In it Douglas Adams does what many authors would never dare - kill off almost entirely all his cast of characters. In what is almost apparently a parody of the series' beginning (the apparent destruction of the Earth) he ends the series with the complete annihilation of all of his characters and the Earth that they are currently standing on from all space, time and probability. It is a touching, sad and almost hysterically funny moment. The way all the threads are pulled together is a masterclass - and the final joke which has been awaiting its punchline since the third book is one of the best I have ever seen. The ending puts me into tears, then howls of laughter, then tears again. I find it ironic that the ending to a series of 'comedic' books is such a sad one but it is perfect, and I would not see it any other way.
My favourite opening line is this:
Nineteen Eighty Four said:It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
It is such a simple line, so simple that you don't pick up on just how strange it is until you have gone a few lines down and then you just end up thing "...wait a minute? Did that say what I think it did?". It holds much of the feeling of the entire book.
As for closing lines, I think I'll have to go for this.
Casino Royale said:The job's done; The bitch is dead.
It isn't often that a book manages to end on a climax, as opposed to the calm down after the action, but with this one line, and the build up to it, Casino Royale manages to pull it off. It is a simple closing yet it manages to pull the book to a perfect close. It shoes just how much of a cold hearted bastard the James Bond character from the books can be.
The best ending overall for me is the last of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy of five, Mostly Harmless. In it Douglas Adams does what many authors would never dare - kill off almost entirely all his cast of characters. In what is almost apparently a parody of the series' beginning (the apparent destruction of the Earth) he ends the series with the complete annihilation of all of his characters and the Earth that they are currently standing on from all space, time and probability. It is a touching, sad and almost hysterically funny moment. The way all the threads are pulled together is a masterclass - and the final joke which has been awaiting its punchline since the third book is one of the best I have ever seen. The ending puts me into tears, then howls of laughter, then tears again. I find it ironic that the ending to a series of 'comedic' books is such a sad one but it is perfect, and I would not see it any other way.