I just love books that will hook you from the beginning. There’s just a special feeling when the first paragraph is so breathtaking that you have to stop and take it in. I usually know from that moment that I’m absolutely going to love that story. I had that feeling when I started The Eye of the World, and it made me want to share a few of the best opening paragraphs that I’ve stumbled across.
The Eye of the World
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor ending to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.”
-Robert Jordan
tuck everlasting
“The first week of August hands at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and the sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightening, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.”
-Natalie Babbitt
Their eyes were watching God
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For other’s the sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men”
-Zora Neal Hurston
These are some of the best opening paragraphs that I have read. They’re just a great representation of what is to come. They completely showcase the author’s writing style and just sets up a great experience.
What book had the best opening paragraph in your opinion?
