From the category archives:

Opening Lines

The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver

by Derwood Hunsdale-Talbot on April 30, 2010

Opening lines: I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw New Hardbine’s father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. I’m not lying. He got stuck up there. About nineteen people congregated during the time it took for Norman Strick to walk up to the Courthouse and blow the whistle for the volunteer fire department. They eventually did come with the ladder and haul him down, and he wasn’t dead but los his hearing an din many other ways was never the same afterward. They said he overfilled the tire.”

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Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

by Derwood Hunsdale-Talbot on April 22, 2010

Opening line:
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

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Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood

by Derwood Hunsdale-Talbot on January 21, 2010

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The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac

by Reviewer on September 17, 2009

Opening line:
Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.

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