How much do you judge a book by its opening lines? I praised P.D. James a while back for her opening lines. It is a wonderful feeling to open a new book with a great sentence or paragraph, but how much does a poor opening sink your hopes for the rest of the book? What do you think of the following openings? Do they pique your interest or leave you flat? (I picked books of similar genre released this year or last.)
1. When the rain isn’t so much falling–be it in bucket loads or like cats and dogs–but rather slamming into the car like an avalanche of stone, you know it’s time to pull over.
When you can’t see much more than the slaphappy wipers splashing through rivers on the windshield, when you’re suddenly not sure if you’re on the road any longer, and your radio emits nothing but static, and you haven’t seen another car since the sky turned black, and your fingers are tense on the wheel in an attempt to steady the old Accord in the face of terrifying wind gusts, you know it’s so totally time to pull over. (source)
2. Starjet Commander Cody Ferguson, six, turned the gears, adjusted the knobs, and jammed the joystick into hyperdrive. Starship Galaxy went into a steep climb, super thrusters whining at top speed.
Back on earth, Daddy looked angry. Mommy cried. The doctor rolled his chair over, put his head close to theirs, and smiled the sour little smile that grown-ups smile when there is nothing in the world to smile about. (source)
3. The guy’s BO made Luke’s eyes water. He had long greasy hair, an eleven o’clock shadow, jeans as brown as they were blue, and a crumpled, stain-riddled Hawaiian shirt.
“This your first time to Agua Rancheria?” He sniffed loudly, wiping his nose.
Luke gave a nod and looked out the bus window, hoping to end the conversation.
No such luck. (source)
4.A dead man spoke to her from the shadows. “Seven o’clock,” his voice rasped, barely audible over the wind tumbling through the dry heat of late summer. “The Mint.”
Even as the wind carried it away, she began telling herself it was an illusion, a ghost speaking to her from the shadows of her own mind rather than the shadows of this pothole-laden street.
Still.
She put down the garbage can and glanced at Steve on the other side of the garbage truck. He was bending down to pick up a couple of clipped branches; if he’d heard the voice, it hadn’t stopped him. (source)
I found them all pretty good, and was surprised (frankly) to find that they were CBA books.
Maybe you’re more generous than I am, but it could be my inexperience. I think the first one is terrible. If that kind of style keeps up for the whole chapter and I don’t feel I need to read it for review, I would put it down. The second one doesn’t move me, but I’m still interesting in the book. The other two are pretty interesting to me. Both are gripping in the right way.
I rarely let a book’s opening sentences or paragraphs sway me one way or the other. I usually give the writer a fair chance to hook me. A story-teller’s gait is not a gallop.
“We were drunk with happiness in those early years. Everybody was, especially the young people. These were the first years of the Rediscovery of Man, when the Instrumentality dug deep into the treasury, reconstructing the old cultures, the old languages, and even the old troubles. The nightmare of perfection had taken our forefathers to the brink of suicide.”
That’s intriguing. But as you can see, I’m easy. 🙂
Deborah, I suppose I don’t judge a book on my shelf so quickly either, but I do judge those I haven’t purchased yet. Maybe not on the first sentences, but on some snippet I’ve snatched from it.
“A piece of advice: If you ever follow someone in my neighborhood, don’t wear pink.”