the first sentences

Out of the hundreds of books available in a bookstore, I admit I get attracted first to the one with the most intriguing title. And then the cover design helps. Then add the testimonies on the first and last flaps of the book.

But if I should salute the authors that I had read, I believe I shall do it on the account of their first sentences. I know that the first sentence is a delicate dish that each writer takes the most care in cooking, spicing up, garnishing and serving out. The first sentence must be interesting, significant, witty, and touching enough to let the reader decide that this must be a good read.

I'd like to go back to some of the books I have in the family room shelves and pick a few first sentences that caught my attention. At the end of this collection I shall poke some of my buddies and ask them to collect their own favorite intros as well.

"It may be that I am growing old in this world and have used up more than my share of allotted words and eager audiences."
- The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans

"In the last days of Narnia, far up to the west beyond Lantern Waste and close beside the great waterfall, there lived an Ape."
- The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

"Manhattan, island of glittering dreams, slept in the predawn darkness."
- The First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"Money talks, but you may think that the conversation of a little old ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper."
- The Tale of a Tainted Tenner by O. Henry

"The jury was ready."
- The Appeal by John Grisham

"By human standards it could not possibly have been artificial: It was the size of a world."
- Contact by Carl Sagan

"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975."
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini