What's the best opening to any book you've ever read & why.
For me its The Sound & the Fury. So well written, captivating but without giving you one clue what the hell is going on.
Greatest opening chapter of all time
What's the best opening to any book you've ever read & why.
For me its The Sound & the Fury. So well written, captivating but without giving you one clue what the hell is going on.
Harry Potter and I'm being serious
The “Instead of an Introduction” opening in Demons is top tier kino m’homie
Extracts
The Overture of Proust. It
>carefully sets up ALL major themes of time and memory
>introduces many later important characters in throwaway lines
>is a miniature, Freudian, prequel version of the Odette/ Swann story along with the narrator/ Albertine story and basically the entire book
Plot wise it is basically the rest of the book but in a condensed, Freudian format.
You have never read Proust, and that’s indicated by your being moronic and thinking Proust based Bergotte on himself — it’s Bloch, you absolute moron. Even Wikipedia has more depth than anything you actually post
Did I ever say they were one for for one of each other or did I just say they shared a similar characteristic? Even the invalid Aunt Leonie is based off of Proust himself. You just want something to get steamed over and you are angry that I Jon Kolner bring so much to this dreadful board.
That’s what you look like IRL and yes, you did, imbecile, in another post.
Don't feed the namegays.
No, I actually was trying to imply that the discussion of Bergotte in the beautiful literary analysis of the narrator under the tree is what was relevant to the thread. It doesn’t matter though because I will still stick to what you said as well because it is not wrong.
Because the thread was some shit post about books where they discuss the “magic of reading books” and that is just a really gay way of describing the narrators apotheosis under the tree when he reads excerpts of Bergotte which he already thought of. That is what I was thinking of.
I am trans if that matters to your interpretation of my posts
i am jon kolner and i am a huge fan of wiener
i approve this message
To be serious without shitposting- Narrator, Bloch, Bergotte, Aunt Leonie. All of these characters share major attributes of Proust himself and it is intentional. I am sure minor characters also share some aspects of himself but these are the key ones.
>Bergotte
Nope. Try again, bub. Try actually reading ISOLT. Proust has stated in his letters who he modeled characters after. Bergotte (who share hardly any major characteristics with Proust and the narrator) was not modeled after himself — but a few writers he admirer. Your have about as much insight as a high schooler who has never done the reading.
It is really nitpicking because the writers opinions of Bergotte and of reading fiction in general were what made the post relevant to the low quality thread.
I am clinically moronic and am using AI to make context specific posts. Around 18 years old, I could finally read at the 6th grade level
>6th grade level
Well I am also Jon Kolner and I say you vastly overestimate my reading faculties.
I must say, good sir, you ascertainment of my overestimated reading faculties is quite perspicacious and I quite think if given the chance, my fellatio-cum-anal capabilities will prove rather remarkably for any make with bulbous muscles
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.
Swann's Way
In the hole of my ass there lived a hobbit.
>The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed
Only correct answer
>The Sound And The Fury
Not sure it's really fair to count this, since it's more than a quarter of the whole book. It's more like Section I. (Of course it's great.) If we're going for really long first chapters, how about Molloy? That has a seventy-page first chapter, and fifty pages of that is the second *paragraph*, haha. Well done Samuel you mad lunatic.
>The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed
This is a good opening line and also a pretty good opening chapter (for what it is). A pity the book can't deliver on the promise, but that's SK for you.
>e-girlta and its not even close.
It's a good opening paragraph, but the chapter as a whole isn't as good.
>Moby Dick's first chapter is excellent
Yeah, it's Melville, but not so Melville-y it scares you off. It reels you in without risking breaking the line.
FOUR MOSTLY LIGHTER BOOKS WITH GOOD FIRST CHAPTERS
— Jurassic Park
"Prologue: Bite of the Raptor" is really eerie and attention-grabbing and would have made a great opening to the film. It hints but doesn't give too much away. (Unlike what they actually did, which was awful.)
— The Sign Of The Four
Holmes plus cocaine and then a cute little problem with the watch, and then the woman comes in. Just really good scene-setting, comfy with a hint of edge. (Pity the book as a whole isn't great.)
— Watership Down
Great ominous opening with the cliff-hanger ending where we are shown the notice-board confirming the imminent destruction of the warren.
— On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Really good description (Fleming obviously knew French resorts) and just the right combination of atmosphere and mystery. Ends on a cliffhanger; leaves us wanting to know what the hell is going on. And it all makes perfect sense in terms of the story; it's not just contrived to provide a good opening. Granted the Bond books are adolescent nonsense, they're much better written than they have any right to be.
The first act of Hamlet. Text cannot possibly contain more.
>The first act of Hamlet.
I think the first *scene*, rather than the first act, corresponds to an opening chapter. I do think this is probably Shakespeare's best opening scene. Some are positively clunky (e.g. As You Like It, with Orlando telling his old servant stuff he would certainly already know, just so the audience can learn it.)
Macbeth for my money.
Hamlet and Macbeth show what a based crowdpleasing hack he was. Straight in with the ghosts and the witches, act one scene one, no fricking about
e-girlta and its not even close.
You have to be nice to pedestrians.
Pedestrians comprise the greater part of humanity. Moreover, its better part. Pedestrians created the world. They built cities, erected tall buildings, laid out sewers and waterlines, paved the streets and lit them with electricity. They spread civilization throughout the world, invented the printing press and gunpowder, flung bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade, and established that no less than 114 tasty, nutritious dishes can be made from basedbeans.
And just when everything was ready, when our native planet had become relatively comfortable, the motorists appeared.
It should be noted that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians. But, somehow, the motorists quickly forgot about this. They started running over the mild-mannered and intelligent pedestrians. The streets—laid out by pedestrians—were taken over by the motorists. The roads became twice as wide, while the sidewalks shrunk to the size of a postage stamp. The frightened pedestrians were pushed up against the walls of the buildings.
In a big city, pedestrians live like martyrs. They’ve been forced into a kind of traffic ghetto. They are only allowed to cross the streets at the intersections, that is, exactly where the traffic is heaviest—where the thread by which a pedestrian’s life hangs is most easily snapped.
In our expansive country, the common automobile—intended by the pedestrians to peacefully transport people and things—has assumed the sinister role of a fratricidal weapon. It puts entire cohorts of union members and their loved ones out of commission. And if on occasion a pedestrian manages to dart out from under a silver grille, he is fined by the police for violating the traffic laws.
In general, the pedestrians’ standing is not what it used to be. They, who gave the world such outstanding figures as Horace, Boyle, Mariotte, Lobachevsky, Gutenberg, and Anatole France, have been forced to jump through ridiculous hoops just to remind others of their existence. Lord, oh Lord (who, frankly, doesn’t exist), how low you (who don’t really exist) have let the pedestrian stoop!
Here he is, walking along a Siberian road from Vladivostok to Moscow, carrying a banner that reads IMPROVE THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF THE TEXTILE WORKERS in one hand, and with an extra pair of Uncle Vanya sandals and a lidless tin kettle dangling from a stick that he’s slung over his shoulder. This is a Soviet hiker who left Vladivostok as a young man and who, upon reaching the outskirts of Moscow in his old age, will be run over and killed by a heavy truck. And nobody will even manage to get the license plate number.
Here’s another one, the last of the Mohicans of European foot traffic. He is pushing a barrel around the world. He would have been more than happy to walk just like that, without the barrel, but then nobody would notice that he is a long-distance hiker, and the press would ignore him. And so all his life he is forced to push the damn thing, which, to add insult to injury, has a large yellow advertisement extolling the unparalleled qualities of Motorist’s Dream engine oil.
This is how far the pedestrian has fallen.
>ctrl f 'recogn'
>nothing
hahaha
Moby Dick's first chapter is excellent
Frickin chapter tricked me into reading hundreds of pages about whale vertebrates
Obligatory, I do think that the whole first chapter is very well done.
Yes it goes right in with the full-bore rhetoric. Bleak House does similar. But I think from a narrative viewpoint Great Expectations is better. We're hooked right into the story.
I like the opening paragraph of call of cthulhu
The book of the prophet Isaiah
1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
12 I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.
14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
15 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
16 I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.
17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
Yeah, this is probably the best opening chapter in the Bible. Practically every line gets quoted.
the opening chapter of brave new world
it goes harder into the brave new world lore than the rest of the book combined and doesn't even introduce any of the characters
if you read the first chapter alone you have good handle on what the brave new world is
Best opening: Speak, Memory or e-girlta
Best 1st chapter: 100 years of solitude
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.