T10T | First Lines – Life of a Literary Nerd

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature formerly hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and is currently hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl

This week’s Top 10 Tuesday is all the first lines in books. I thought it would be a little too daunting to try and remember standout ones or take too much time to go through my First Line Fridays posts, so I randomized some numbers and pulled books off my physical bookshelves to get some lines and we’ll see how good they are.

The summer is made for stoop-sitting
and since it’s the last week before school starts,
Harlem is opening its eyes to September.

The end of the world started when a pegasus landed on the hood of my car.
Up until then, I was having a great afternoon.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in 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.

Local Teen Accepts Destiny, Agrees to Become Doctor, Stereotype.
It’s Charlie’s fault that my summer (and now fall) has been one absurd headline after another. Chales Jae Won Bae, aka Charlie, my older brother, firstborn son of a firstborn son, surprised my parents (and all their friends, and the entire gossiping Korean community of Flushing, New York) by getting kicked out of Harvard University (Best school, my mother said, when his acceptance letter arrived).

I have been chasing the Thomas twins around their house for a half hour, begging them to put on their clothes, when the garage door whines up. Their mother was home.

Caledonia stretched along the prow of the Ghost as the ship sliced through black water. At night, the ocean offered only a dark reflection of the sky above, and the promise of a cold grave below.

Everything ends. This is obvious. This is the easy part. This is what I believe in: the inevitable, the catastrophe, the apocalypse.

Yeah, I know. You guys are going to read about how I died in agony, and you’re going to be like, “Wow! That sounds cool, Magnus! Can I die in agony too?”

The girl in the picture doesn’t look any different. Things you see: brown eyes. honey hair to the shoulders. Natural eyeliner. Things you don’t: stitches. A neck brace.

Which book has your favorite first lines? Share below!