This list was originally about 40 songs long, and didn’t include the letters X and Z. My Amazon and Spotify playlists let me down so I was forced to delve further into the internet. I’ve no doubt that if I played to this my friends and family, they’d know it was mine.
I used the same parameters as Chris did. I went off the songs on my iPod. These aren’t necessarily my 26 favourite songs, but songs that have some sort of meaning to me… some enough so that they have remained on my playlist for over 25 years.
Believe it or not, the opening line of a book can truly shape the entire experience of reading it. Much like the opening scene to a movie, an author can choose to bring us straight into the action or build a slowly burning sense of purpose through their words.
With that in mind, I wanted to discuss the 12 best opening lines from books I’ve recently read, but I had a decision to make before I got started. I wasn’t sure what the criteria should be. Should it be the prologue, for those that have a prologue, or should it be the first line from chapter one because all of them had a chapter one?