Good Beginnings

I love opening a book for the first time. 

The newness of the binding, tight and cracking as you stretch it open.

Between the front and back cover a world exists, you will be part of this world for the next few days, or weeks.

You acclimate to the smell of the pages and the smell of  the ink. Musty or sour, it's foreignness fading as you immerse your way through the pages.

Pages that are smooth, almost cool to the touch; or rustic, rough, a faint imprint as you run your fingers along the print.

My eyes adjust to the font, getting ready to settle in...a thick font, oozing out ink or maybe a fine script, delicate and feminine.

Then I come to the first page...the first line, that first statement that sets the story in motion. Your world is ready to begin...


"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

"My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted."

"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--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." 














"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way."

"A storm is rolling in, and that always makes me a little sad and wistful so I got it in my head to set to paper all these things that have got us this far on our way through this heathen land."

"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."













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













I love a good book, but I love a good beginning.



What are your favorite beginnings?