Hi clubbers!! We’re excited to be posting our June meme question for the club!
Here’s the question this month, contributed by kheenand at BookerTalk, who joined us in August 2012:
- see future questions for this meme
What is your favourite opening sentence from a classic novel (and why)?
Feel free to answer over at your blog any time in June, and leave the link to your post in the Mister Linky widget below.
(Answers can be as thorough or brief as you like, but let’s share and connect, eh?)
Remember to check out this page for details! And then check out one another’s posts! 🙂
Twitter hashtag: #ccmeme
(linky to be added)
The Classics Club 
oops only just got around to answering June’s question my thoughts here:
but I couldn’t decide on just one sentence – most of my favourite openings comprise more than one sentence.
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A strange jumble of opening lines, thoughts and a brief quiz (and just inside June!):
http://ahostofsparrows.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/classics-club-openings/
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Just squeezed in with this before June is out. My choice was The Jewel in the Crown
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Love in the Time of Cholera: http://reading-in-bed.com/2013/06/28/classics-club-june-meme-favourite-opening-sentence/
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Here is mine: http://surgabukuku.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/my-favorite-opening-line-the-classics-clubs-june-meme/
but where is the linky?
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Finally…my June meme: http://klasikfanda.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-favorite-opening-line-classics-club.html
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Here are my favorite opening lines. http://thereadingitch.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/classics-club-june-meme/
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I think P&P is the best: http://bibliographicmanifestations.blogspot.com/2013/06/classics-club-june-meme-11.html
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This was surprisingly thought-provoking! Such a simple question…
http://sarahsaysread.com/2013/06/13/classics-club-june-question/
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Finally got this up! My response is here: http://epilogging.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/favorite-opening-lines/
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Here’s my response to this meme:
Cheers!
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June Question Answered at:
http://www.thethingsyoucanread.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-classics-club-june-question.html
Cynthia@The Things You Can Read
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Here’s my favourites. http://lynnsbooks.wordpress.com/2013/06/08/there-was-a-hand-in-the-darkness-and-it-held-a-knife-great-opening-sentences/
Lynn 😀
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A lot of great choices so far. P+P is hard to beat but I thought I’d give props to an underrated classic that I don’t see discussed much these days. Here’s mine: http://literaturefrenzy.blogspot.ca/2013/06/june-meme-question-11.html
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Love I Capture the Castle’s opening, I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
http://avidreader25.blogspot.com/2013/06/june-classic-club-meme-question.html
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It is funny to see that I had the same thought as others–Rebecca and A Tale of Two Cities http://inspirationflies.blogspot.com/2013/06/classics-club-june-meme.html
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Having set this as a challenge for everyone now I’m feeling the pressure to come up with something that will astound everyone. Yeh in my dreams. All the good ones have been snaffled already….
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There are some great choices here. Of the ones already mentioned, Rebecca and Anna Karenina are my favourites.
These are my 20th century choices:
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know”. The Outsider by Camus
Both set the tone so well for the stories ahead.
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Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way from Anna Karenina by Leon Tolstoy… http://whatihaveinmindblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/532/
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Here is mine: http://jaynesbooks.blogspot.com/2013/06/june-meme-question-11-ccmeme.html
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“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” -Scaramouche
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That was my choice too! Along with two others. 🙂
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Moby Dick, Scaramouche, and A Tale of Two Cities popped into my head, all three at once! Here’s my response…http://breadcrumbreads.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/classics-club-june-question-favourite-opening-line/
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I chose the opening line of Pride & Prejudice, but added the line following because the second one just really adds to the irony in the first line! Hop on over to my post 🙂
Juli @ Universe in Words
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I know this is clichéd and so over written but there is so much of truth in this one sentence – its humorous, questions the status quo and false norms of the society and rises the pertinent questions about a woman’s freedom and identity and its linkages with marriage, that too marriage to a wealthy man – Yup its one and only, the immortal lines from P&P “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
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I chose exactly the same one! I guess you can’t escape the classics 😉
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You can never escape the classics! Besides, Jane Austen was the fountain of all wisdom for women! Can’t go too wrong with her 🙂
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This one was my first thought too.
It’s such a perfect beginning for all the reasons you said, Also for the way that this one sentence sets up everything that happens throughout the entire book.
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Rebecca by [Daphne Du Maurier] “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” And
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, “Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-l7th September-a Thursday.” Agatha Christi.
I am repressing this since I think this is an awesome thing to do on a blog.
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Rebecca would have been my choice, too! Absolutely love that line.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith is also brilliant: “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
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Ahhh I’d forgotten this one. It’s so atmospheric, it’s delicious!
Thanks for reminding me 🙂
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