Guess the opening lines...

I loved and reread them so much in my twenties that I’m almost afraid to reread them in case they don’t hold up. That opening paragraph really stays in the mind.

Edward Henry Machin first saw the smoke on the 27th May 1867, in Brougham Street, Bursley, the most ancient of the Five Towns. Brougham Street runs down from St Luke's Square straight into the Shropshire Union Canal, and consists partly of buildings known as "potbanks" (until they come to be sold by auction, when auctioneers describe them as "extensive earthenware manufactories") and partly of cottages whose highest rent is four-and-six a week.

Edward Henry Machin first saw the smoke on the 27th May 1867, in Brougham Street, Bursley, the most ancient of the Five Towns. Brougham Street runs down from St Luke's Square straight into the Shropshire Union Canal, and consists partly of buildings known as "potbanks" (until they come to be sold by auction, when auctioneers describe them as "extensive earthenware manufactories") and partly of cottages whose highest rent is four-and-six a week.

Yes! Possibly time to re-read all twelve.

1. It is difficult to know quite where to begin this story, but I have fixed my choice on a certain Wednesday at luncheon at the Vicarage. The conversation, though in the main irrelevant to the matter in hand, yet contained one or two suggestive incidents which influenced later developments.
2. The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.
3. The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them.

another DLS fan I suspect

Yes indeed.

Last one for this evening:

In summer all right-minded boys built huts in the furze-hill behind the College—little lairs whittled out of the heart of the prickly bushes, full of stumps, odd root-ends, and spikes, but, since they were strictly forbidden, palaces of delight.

Here are 2 well know books that haven't been done yet, along with one less well know, but it is one of my favourite opening lines from one of my favourite books:

1. In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.
2. In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark Bridge, which is of iron, and London Bridge, which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.
3. Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.

Re-reading this at the moment and trying to spin it out to enjoy it for longer. The opening of Strong Poison which was done upthread is one of my favourites. The description of the different characters in the jury interacting is just sublime.

And by the way,” said Mr. Hankin, arresting Miss Rossiter as she rose to go, “there is a new copy-writer coming in today.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Hankin?”
“His name is Bredon. I can't tell you much about him; Mr. Pym engaged him himself; but you will see that he is looked after.”

Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy L. Sayers

This is the opening of A Question of Upbringing, the first in Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time sequence.

Hard Times was coursework. Exam texts were Emma, King Lear, The Crucible and Songs of Innocence and Experience. Loved them all!

1984?

Guess what else was on the list 🤔

Also (as someone has already said The Great Gatsby and P&P, two of my faves, here's another:

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
(not very challenging perhaps)

Another fave (rather harder?)
And by the way,” said Mr. Hankin, arresting Miss Rossiter as she rose to go, “there is a new copy-writer coming in today.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Hankin?”
“His name is Bredon. I can't tell you much about him; Mr. Pym engaged him himself; but you will see that he is looked after.”

“A mighty fist of wind socked the balloon in two rapid blows, one- two, the second more vicious than the first. It jerked Gadd right out of the basket on to the ground, and with Gadd’s considerable weight removed from the equation lifted the ballooon five feet or so straight into the air”.
From possibly the finest opening chapter of any novel I’ve ever read .

Was also one of my a level set texts in the 1980s.