:
IT WAS A DARK & STORMY NIGHT...

Guy Dammann recently asked
readers of the Guardian Books Blog:

"What's your favourite first line?
Don't judge a book by its cover. First
sentences are fair game, though."

The first response in the comment thread was predictable; it was the opening line of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Yes, I agree, it's a classic.

But once past that standard, there are a number of other familiar picks people often come up with like the beginning of Camus' The Stranger, and so forth.

It seemed to me the occasion called for something more. And so I'll share with you one of my own personal favorites:

*It is a curious thing that at my age-- fifty-five last birthday-- I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I come to the end of the trip! ...

Because I am going to tell the strangest story that I remember... At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a petticoat in the whole history.*

This is the beginning of
King Solomon's Mines
by H Rider Haggard.

And, for the benefit of some of my readers who drop in to my blog via satellite from back of the beyond, somewhere near the Khyber Pass or even more remote, as you are wont to do, I shall provide you with a link to the online text of the book on Project Gutenberg :-)

Just in case the evenings where you are seem to drag on with only the sporadic call of a hyena or the yipping of jackals running past your window to punctuate the time, now you can plug into the Victorian Era, a hundred years ago, to read a great, old-fashioned, rip-roaring yarn. Enjoy!

:: Gutenberg E-text #2166 ::

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