Random Image
New Forum Topics
Latest Interviews
Christa Faust
by Rob Hart
Ed Brubaker
by Garrett Faber
Brian K. Vaughan
by Garrett Faber
John Waters
by Becky Fritter
Our Social Networks
The best first page you have ever read
Which one? Come on, there must be one! Only the first!
Mine is Charles Dickens' "Tale of two cities":
"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..." and so on.
I feel it so near.
I look at your eyes and I see a mirror.
The quickest decision to buy a book from checking out the first page was Hunter. S. Thompsons Fear n Loathing in Las Vegas.
If you've read it you'll know what I mean, if you have'nt treat yourself.
Its not how hard ya rock, its how well ya roll.
Too bad that the search function is so messed up on this new site because there are a ton of threads like this from the past...
My favorite is from Jesus' Son:
A salesman who shared his liquor and steered while sleeping... A Cherokee filled with bourbon... A VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes, captained by a college student...
And a famly from Marshalltown who headonned and killed forever a man driving west out of Bethany, Missouri...
... I rose up sopping wet from sleeping under the pouring rain, and something less than conscious, thanks to the first three of the people I've already named - the salesman and the Indian and the student - all of whom had given me drugs. At the head of the entrance ramp I waited without hope of a ride. What was the point, even, of rolling up my sleeping bag when I was too wet to be let into anybody's car?
Everybody thinks their whole life should be at least as much fun as masturbation - Tender Branson
I'm not sure about my favorite ever, but very recently the first page of [i]The Shipping News[/i] really grabbed me.
Honestly it was the first paragraph that did it.
"Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.
Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood; at the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing. He ate prodigiously, liked a ham knuckle, buttered spuds."
"I would never BUY Starbucks coffee grounds since they're popular and I like to hate on popular things because it makes me feel better about my averageness."
--Spike
im not sure what my favorite first pages are but the only books i was completely sold on after reading only part of the first page were DERMAPHORIA and the PHINNEAS POE OMNIBUS.
and i hate dickens! that boring fuck!
[Ritt] 11:55 pm: I come down cold and strong like WINTER HAIL/ When I drop bombs they score tens on RICHTER SCALES!/ I get on the stage spit a VERSE AND BLOW/ everybody back within the FIRST TEN ROWS!!
Yeah, I forgot about the opening to Jesus' Son. Powerful stuff, that book.
"Pink and gray sky, the color of muscle. The truck screams past and its exhaust drifts into dark flowers that hang on the air and fade away like I’m staring through a mirror stained with my own fingerprints. I saved a guy’s life just now and I think it was a mistake. I didn’t recognize him, not at first. I jerked him back from the edge by pure thoughtless reflex, like I was saying god bless you to a stranger sneezing beside me on the bus. Then I got a shiver fast scope of the his face and in a far corner of my brain came a sunspot flare of recognition, like glancing up at a passing cloud and thinking wow, that cloud looks exactly like a girl on a bicycle. Blink, and the flare is gone. Even now the particulars of the guy’s face are dissolving into a thousand others, but I remember he had blond hair and mercury eyes. The slow spin of echoes and I realize I have seen this man before, and I believe him to be a monster. I think he is one of my own monsters come home. This is how it begins."
Hell's Half Acre. So much of what I love about Baer's writing, right there on the first page.
more threads definitely need tits
[Ritt] 11:55 pm: I come down cold and strong like WINTER HAIL/ When I drop bombs they score tens on RICHTER SCALES!/ I get on the stage spit a VERSE AND BLOW/ everybody back within the FIRST TEN ROWS!!
I loved that, Pocketfives, I will definitely read it.
By the way I have to notice you have a mirror in your avatar, I have a mirror in my avatar, and in your first page we find: "...dark flowers that hang on the air and fade away like I’m staring through a mirror stained with my own fingerprints". Maybe we met in another life :-)
"Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing". Yeah.
For what concerns Dickens, he's not my favourite, I didn't even finish that book (!), but that first page got all my brain RAM and a little dirty space on my hard disk.
I look at your eyes and I see a mirror.
Notes from Underground:
I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!
I have been going on like that for a long time--twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed." - The Gunslinger by Stephen King
But that HHA by Baer is fucking awesome. Makes me want to go read it again right now. So much better than about 90% of what is out there today. Damn, I wish his new book would come out. And of the three, I THINK HHA may be my favorite.
I know what you mean, Richard. Every time I start thinking about one of the trilogy, I want to read it and start thinking it might be my favorite. Damn. My friend has had my omnibus for a long time now, and she's almost finished. 'Bout time; I need to reread the whole thing. Again.
You know, I think I'm looking more forward to The Butterfly Plague (if it should ever choose to exist) than Godspeed. But I'd still prefer Godspeed's release to world peace, so it's all relative.
Copyright 2008 - A Writers Cult, LLC
Joined: 2008-07-08
From: