The Opening Lines Quiz

Here we go fellow bibliophiles. 50 Opening Lines from famous books 📚

Once you have written down ALL the Titles and Authors

 (1 point each) Click Here for the answers. 

We start with the easy peasy lemon squeezy ones first and then it's on to the more tricky ones.

They range from classics to modern and from horror to poetry.

 Some are one liners others are whole paragraphs. 

Some you can guess from the context, others you cant.

 Hopefully a little something for everyone. Good Luck 😁 

 1. Call me Ishmael  

2. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

3. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

4. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

5. Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much

6. All children, except one, grow up.

7. Amergo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.

8. No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

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

10. Marley was dead, to begin with.

11. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

12. In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort

13. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

14 .All this happened, more or less.”

15.We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold

16 .It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York

17. In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black coats, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.

18. In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

19. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

20. This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

21. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

22. It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

23.Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes

24. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

 25. A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words “Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre” and, in a shield, the World State's Motto: “Community, Identity, Stability”.

26. It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed.

27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.

28. In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul

29. It was a pleasure to burn.

30. My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip

31. The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there

32. The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

33. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

34. The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon

35. A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green

36. Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

37. People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.

38. When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none.

39. Tom glanced behind him and saw the man coming out of the Green Cage, heading his way. Tom Walked faster. There was no doubt the man was after him.

40.The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.

41. In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages. His story will be told here. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name – in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations, de Sade’s, for instance, or Stain-Just’s, Fouché’s, Bonaparte’s, etc. – has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immortality, or, more succinctly, wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of smell.

42. 3 May. Bistritz. Left Munich at 8.35pm, on 1 May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46pm, but train was an hour late.

43. To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters' and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

44.Well, let's start with Elizabeth, shall we? And see where that gets us?I knew who she was, of course; everybody here knows Elizabeth. She has one of the three-bedroom flats in Larkin Court. It's the one on the corner, with the decking? Also, I was once on a quiz team with Stephen, who, for a number of reasons, is Elizabeth's third husband.

45. Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband.

46. Three hundred and forty–eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago to–day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal.

47. umber whunn yerrrnnn umber whunnn fayunnn These sounds: even in the haze.

48. Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable

49. A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.

50. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

The Whispering Trees by Jacqueline Harret

 

You can buy The Whispering Trees...Here

You can follow Jacqueline Harret...Here

• The Blurb...

The unidentified body of a young man is found in Nant Fawr woods, Cardiff, giving DI Mandy Wilde and her team a big problem. There’s only one clue – his expensive handmade shoes.
But where is he from? Why has no one come forward to identify him?
Then… a local boy disappears, a rash of burglaries breaks out and the pressure is on.
Yet again, DI Wilde is fighting on all fronts. Not just the criminals and her boss, but even her fly-by-night twin sister. She needs every ounce of her famous off-beat thinking to create order from the chaos.

• Our Review...

Another strong showing from Cardiff's own frizzy haired DI Mandy Wilde.  Mandy throws herself into her job, partly to keep her occupied and away from her feckless twin sister. But she does love her niece/surrogate daughter Tabitha. So a fully dysfunctional female household! Absolutely terrifying.

Luckily Mandy is up to her neck in work. A body is found in the local woods, wearing expensive shoes and carrying a wad of cash. He carries no identification however. It is suspected that he may have died from natural causes. Undeterred  Mandy and her crew of oddbods and sods investigators spent a huge amount of time and effort trying to find out all about the mystery man. To be honest, I don't know if the Cardiff five-0 would spent that amount of manpower tracking down a dead Dai Doe. Still this is crime fiction and if you wanted accuracy and realism you would watch a documentary.

Eventually the troop make progress and I want to tell more but am wary of giving spoilers. Suffice to say some widows gain a second wind 🤪. The latter portion of the book is given over to some intriguing interrogation scenes, that are tense and provide a fitting climax to a well plotted crime caper. 

The writing is straight and to the point without being too much so. The cast is mostly made up of strong female characters. A solid sequel to The Nesting Place.

As a side note I imagine that DI Mandy Wilde inherits the same Cardiff "cinematic universe" (as my son calls it) as Jonah Greene the Coroners Officer from The List and Buzzard House by  Graham H Miller. Would love for them to collaborate on a case one day.

• Selected Quotes...

Igor was slouched in a corner of the room. He was wary when they entered, watching like a fox surrounded by hounds

Ruth Crozier fiddled with the wedding band she still wore. Interesting how some widows dispensed with their rings as soon as their husbands went underground, while others hung on, clinging to a rosy image of the deceased. Perhaps Ruth Crozier was insecure in her singledom.

Close up she could see the wrinkles on her hands, nearer fifty than forty, well preserved. Another widow. Wonder what her husband died from. A tongue lashing perhaps.

• If You Liked This, Then You May Like These

The List by Graham H Miller (Click Here for our review)

Crimson Snow by Jason Vowles (Click Here for our review)

The Couple at No9 by Claire Douglas (Click Here for our review)

• About the Author

Jacqueline Harrett was born and brought up in a small village in Northern Ireland. After living in various places in South Wales she settled in Cardiff with her husband of many years, Lola the mad cat and Speedy, an ancient and territorial tortoise. Her two grown-up children – critical reader and technical advisor – live nearby.

As an only child she was a voracious reader and loved stories. Her father was a wonderful storyteller, encouraging her to tell her own stories and developing her love of oral stories. This was the inspiration behind her mini-book, Tell Me Another… Speaking and Listening Through Storytelling and her PhD on the effects of oral stories on young children’s language and imagination.

Jacqui has always been a writer but it wasn’t until 1997 that she started publishing her work with articles in English in Wales and then in the TES. A book for teachers, Exciting Writing, won the UKLA author award. As a former teacher and academic, she published and gave presentations on the value of story for children’s development.

After retiring from academia, Jacqui concentrated on more creative writing, attending classes and developing the craft. She had stories published in anthologies (Honno, MTP) and flash fiction online, and hidden in the depths of her computer are many other stories, a novel, novella and books for children. Like reading, writing is an obsession.

With her friend and colleague, Janet Laugharne, she has written a novel, What Lies Between Them, to be published in February 2022 under the pseudonym J. L. Harland.

Jacqui’s debut, The Nesting Place, was started in lockdown and the culmination of several different elements. It started with Katherine Stansfield’s excellent Crime Writing courses at Cardiff University, pre-pandemic. Then, during lockdown, a further course with Writing Magazine’s James McCreet, when the ideas began to take shape and the feedback from James helped with the process of producing the novel.

(from harret.co.uk)

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris

 

You can buy Act Of Oblivion...Here

You can find out more about Robert Harris...Here

• The Blurb...

'From what is it they flee?'
He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, 'They killed the King.'

1660. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. They are on the run and wanted for the murder of Charles I. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, they have been found guilty in absentia of high treason.

In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He'll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. A reward hangs over their heads - for their capture, dead or alive.

Act of Oblivion is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other. It is the thrilling new novel by Robert Harris.

• Our Review...

Robert Harris is probably my favourite author and for good reason. He is not afraid to change his "weapon of choice." Lee Child for all his success has strictly maintained his winning formulae for book after book. If it aint broke dont fix it right, and one could see his point. Robert Harris is different. He started with alternative history (Fatherland) but has dabbled in dystopian science fiction (The Second Sleep), contemporary fiction (The Fear Index, The Ghost, Conclave) and what I believe to be the strongest string to his bow historical fiction (The Cicero trilogy, Pompeii, Officer and a Spy, Munich, V2 and now Act of Oblivion.)

He does two things exceedingly well. He describes the uppermost strata of political power and the constant changes therein and he also settles the reader into the time period. The reader feels like an small but integral part of whatever timeline the author is describing. There aren't many who can do both these things. The other excellent, well known example I can think of would be Hilary Mantels Wolf Hall series. Chris Lloyd also has both these gifts but tends to focus life further down the political food chain, in the bureaucracy below the people who make the big decisions in history.

And so to Act of Oblivion. The Act refers to the restoration of the Monarchy when Charles II takes the thrown left vacant since his father Charles I was executed. The Act wipes the slate clean for any who took up arms against the Monarchy in the Civil War with a few notable exceptions. Those exceptions being anyone who signed the King's execution order. They are to be hunted down and hung, drawn and quartered. And so the biggest man hunt of the 17th Century begins.

The two Colonels, Ned Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe alight in the New World initially living out in the open, using their own names. When a warrant for their arrest arrives from London the duo are off and running. Hiding in cellars, barns, secret rooms and even out in the wild as the net inexorably closes around them. The chase is eventful and long, and you will keep turning the page faster and faster to find out who pervades in the end.

The author expertly keeps us enthralled with several strands. We follow the driven regicide hunter in chief Nayler and gradually come to understand his obsession with Whalley and Goffe in particular. We follow the battle against poverty and the need for secrecy of Goffe's wife and their young family whom Goffe has unwillingly abandoned. We are caught up in the escape of Whalley and Goffe including their very different personalities and religious outlooks. We get a series of diary entries where Ned explains his rise to power with his star tied to that of his cousin Oliver Cromwell, and finally we get a glimpse in the halls of power with Charles ll, his brother the Duke of York and the courtiers that surround them including Nayler's boss. The author dexterously juggles all these balls, each  in turn demanding our full attention. 

The reader will hungrily learn a lot about a lesser known part  of  British history all while being enthralled in a wonderfully told escape story. All based on a true episode. 

After reading this novel I would recommend watching a youtube video where Harris discusses his research into Whalley and Goffe. It is utterly fascinating.

The reader feels as if they are there, in the middle of it all, in real time. The times may change but people and their nature's do not. The protagonists aren't wholly good, and the antagonist isn't wholly bad. Harris like many good writers understands this but his writing purveys it better than most. 

At times the manhunt reminded me of the "who are those guys?"scene from Butch  Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Where the outlaws while being exhausted in the chase recognise the tenacity and endurance of the posse hunting them. In turn Whalley and Goffe's deprivations while on the run reminded me of the hardships endured in "Papillon." 

A fascinating tale, superbly told.

Books like this are the reason I love books. Breathtakingly good.

• Selected Quotes...

"The killing of a tyrant is no crime.’ ‘The most learned minds in England disagree with you.’ ‘Learned minds can still believe wicked things, especially when their own interests are at stake."

"I shan’t press you on the matter – merely advise you, from long experience, that obsession and good judgement seldom sit well together."

"you’re two years past forty, you know nothing of soldiering, you will be killed for certain, you will leave me a widow with four little ones to look after and no money to do it. ‘Besides, your cousin Cromwell is half mad, you’ve said it often enough yourself’ (this spoken quietly, with a glance at the window, beyond which Oliver sat impatiently on his mount)."

"He must have known that by his demeanour at the trial and on the scaffold, he had won a victory over his enemies at last. It was only then that it occurred to Ned that the King had died exactly as the regicides had many years later – in the absolute certainty that he was right."

"Our intention was that England should be a righteous republic, and that no kings or princes, lords or bishops should ever again interpose themselves between the people and Almighty God. The principle was a fine one; I believed in it then and believe in it still,"

• If You Like This, Then You May Like...

Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (same time period as Act of Oblivion)

• About The Author...

Robert Harris was born in Nottingham in 1957, later studying English at Cambridge University.

He was a TV correspondent for the BBC and has also worked as a columnist for the London Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, and as Political Editor for The Observer. He was named 'Columnist of the Year' in the 2003 British Press Awards.

As well as several non-fiction books, including Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries (1986), he is the author of six novels: Fatherland (1992), set in 1964 in Berlin; Enigma (1995), set in World War II; Archangel (1998), set in present day Russia; Pompeii (2003), a dramatisation of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79; Imperium (2006), the first of a trilogy of novels about Cicero; The Ghost (2007), narrated by a professional ghost writer; Lustrum (2009), the second in the Cicero trilogy, shortlisted for the 2010 Walter Scott Prize; The Fear Index (2011); An Officer and a Spy (2013); and Dictator (2015), the last in the Cicero trilogy. 

His novel Enigma, about the codebreakers of Bletchley Park, was made into a feature film directed by Michael Apted, from a script by Tom Stoppard.  Archangel, the story of a historian on the trail of Stalin's secret diaries, was adapted for BBC Television in 2005, starring Daniel Craig. Pompeii has recently been adapted for film by the author, and will be directed by Roman Polanski.

Robert Harris lives in Berkshire and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

(from British Literature Council)

Paris Requiem by Chris Lloyd

 

You can pre-order Paris Requiem...Here

You can follow Chris Lloyd...Here

You can follow Crime Cymru...Here

416 pages

NB I received a free copy of this book from Orion books in exchange for a fair and honest  review

• The Blurb...

Paris, September 1940.

After three months under Nazi Occupation, not much can shock Detective Eddie Giral. That is, until he finds a murder victim who was supposed to be in prison. Eddie knows, because he put him there.

The dead man is not the first or the last criminal being let loose onto the streets. But who is pulling the strings, and why?

This question will take Eddie from jazz clubs to opera halls, from old flames to new friends, from the lights of Paris to the darkest countryside - pursued by a most troubling truth: sometimes to do the right thing, you have to join the wrong side...

• Our Review...

Wow, he's done it again. What a belter of a book. Part relentless thriller, part time-machine. Chris Lloyd drops you in Paris during the occupation, with a grisly murder to solve, but you can trust nobody and nobody trusts you.

I have a theory that certain literary mash-ups of stories, or setting or genre can result in fantastic new creations that exude a new life of their own. Think if you combined "Tom Brown's schooldays" with wizards you get Harry Potter. If you meld a serial killer story with "The Old Man and the Sea" you get "Jaws". Lastly, if you cross the power politics of "The Godfather" with the medieval period of history and throw in a few mythical creatures you get "Game of Thrones" even some of the terminology and roles are similar e.g. "King of the Seven Kingdoms" and "Head of the Five Families" and "Hand of the King" is basically the same as "Consigliere." 

Anyway, I digress back to Chris Lloyd. What the author has done is to mix the hard boiled LA 1920/30s detective Sam Spade genre with the setting of Paris under Nazi occupation during World War 2. This is a genius move as in addition to Eddie's sarcastic, wise cracking attitude dealing with an investigation into scar-faced villains and femme fatales of the LA detective type. Eddie our Anti-Hero is now introduced to at least two layers of added jeopardy. One from above where the various German occupying forces see him as a potential loose cannon and don't trust him. The other threat is from below where the everyday people suspect him of collaborating with the enemy. Throw in a threat to his sons life unless he plays along and the sense of stress is unrelenting from the first. You find yourself racing to the end of the chapter in order just to exhale.

I feel I must mention the character of our protagonist Eddie Giral. I described him in the review of first novel "The Unwanted Dead" as a tough, vulnerable thug of an honest cop. Perhaps honest is pushing it a bit. Forgive me for paraphrasing but  I think the author described him as "a bad guy in the good times, but a good guy in the bad times." Tough and clever, he is like a more dirty, more realistic Jack Reacher. Love a bit of Eddie.

But its not all about surface matters. This is a multi- faceted tale. It involves the investigation, the occupation, two side quests in an attempt at redemption, the battle for Eddies mental well being and how to make choices when all your options are horrifically bad. Its not just an historical whodunnit, it has a solid depth that few others can match. It has a "hinterland" as Dennis Healy might say

Included in the book is an Author's note about the research carried out for the book that is as fascinating as it is heart breaking. This book is a timely reminder of the consequences of extremism. 

When I review  book, I have a habit of underlining tracts that stand out as either as mini insights into the story or of just lovely lyrical phrasing. With this book I was swamped for choice for both. He has a way of conveying complex thoughts, issues and situations in a few clear and aesthetically pleasing lines. Indeed at time of writing this (Nov 2022) I am beyond frustrated that I cannot show you how good he is via some selected quotes. However because the book isn't out until Feb 2023 sadly I am not allowed. As soon as the book is out check back there will be some rip-snorting quotes here!

I only have one criticism of the author. He needs to write faster! Can't wait for Eddie Giral 3!

• Selected Quotes...

"As thinly as possible, the way we'd all learned, to make it last as long as you could. The slice was uneven where my hand was shaking cutting it. The texture was so unlike the bread we used to get, more a collection of crumbs held together in hope."

"..a face hidden behind a massive moustache and a nose that pointed in several directions at once."

"Cocteau once said poverty was a luxury in Montparnesse. Cocteau was an optimist. The area had gone badly down hill since those heady days.."

"..one of the wardens guided me to a dingy room of institutional mould and left me to wait"

"my lip was bleeding, I must have fallen down some stairs. Or resisted arrest. I've written reports too. I know how it works."

• About The Author...

Chris was born in an ambulance racing through a town he’s only returned to once, which probably explains a lot.

Straight after graduating in Spanish and French, he hopped on a bus from Cardiff to Catalonia where he stayed for the next twenty-odd years, first in the small and beautiful city of Girona, then in the big and beautiful city of Barcelona. He’s also lived in Bilbao, pre-empting the Guggenheim by a good few years, and in Madrid, where his love of Barcelona football club deepened. During this time, he worked as a teacher, in educational publishing, as a travel writer and as a translator. He still spends part of his day translating lofty and noble academic and arts texts.

Besides this, he also lived in Grenoble for six months, where he studied the French Resistance movement, a far deeper and more complex subject than history often teaches us and one that has fascinated him for years.

He now lives in his native Wales, where he writes crime novels and translates stuff.

The result of his lifelong interest in World War 2 and resistance and collaboration in Occupied France, The Unwanted Dead (Orion) is Chris’s first novel set in Paris, featuring Detective Eddie Giral. The series will see Eddie negotiate his way through the Occupation, trying to find a path between resistance and collaboration, all the time becoming whoever he must be to survive the ordeal descended on his home.

He also writes the Elisenda Domenech series (Canelo) set in Girona, featuring a police officer in the devolved Catalan police force. The head of an experimental Serious Crime Unit, she fights the worst of human excesses in the most beautiful of settings.

When he’s not writing or trying to keep up with his reading pile, Chris loves travelling, languages, red wine, Wales and Barça at football, Wales at rugby, cryptic crosswords, art, rock music and losing himself in European cities.

He’s especially proud to be a member of the Welsh crime writing collective Crime Cymru, the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors.