Best book intros?

[Anonymous No.16917793]

I think the Lolita one cannot be beaten.

[Anonymous No.16917799]

>>16917793
>Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure. Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n’avais pas le temps de me dire : « Je m’endors. » Et, une demi-heure après, la pensée qu’il était temps de chercher le sommeil m’éveillait ; je voulais poser le volume que je croyais avoir encore dans les mains et souffler ma lumière ; je n’avais pas cessé en dormant de faire des réflexions sur ce que je venais de lire, mais ces réflexions avaient pris un tour un peu particulier ; il me semblait que j’étais moi-même ce dont parlait l’ouvrage : une église, un quatuor, la rivalité de François Ier et de Charles Quint. Cette croyance survivait pendant quelques secondes à mon réveil ; elle ne choquait pas ma raison mais pesait comme des écailles sur mes yeux et les empêchait de se rendre compte que le bougeoir n’était plus allumé. Puis elle commençait à me devenir inintelligible, comme après la métempsycose les pensées d’une existence antérieure ; le sujet du livre se détachait de moi, j’étais libre de m’y appliquer ou non ; aussitôt je recouvrais la vue et j’étais bien étonné de trouver autour de moi une obscurité, douce et reposante pour mes yeux, mais peut-être plus encore pour mon esprit, à qui elle apparaissait comme une chose sans cause, incompréhensible, comme une chose vraiment obscure. Je me demandais quelle heure il pouvait être ; j’entendais le sifflement des trains qui, plus ou moins éloigné, comme le chant d’un oiseau dans une forêt, relevant les distances, me décrivait l’étendue de la campagne déserte où le voyageur se hâte vers la station prochaine ; et le petit chemin qu’il suit va être gravé dans son souvenir par l’excitation qu’il doit à des lieux nouveaux, à des actes inaccoutumés, à la causerie récente et aux adieux sous la lampe étrangère qui le suivent encore dans le silence de la nuit, à la douceur prochaine du retour.
I think Proust just beat it.

[Anonymous No.16917833]

Nabokov's writing style is so cringe. Will never understand why he is considered a master of prose.

[Anonymous No.16917836]

LO LEE TA

[Anonymous No.16917906]

>>16917793

[Anonymous No.16917912]

>>16917833
Is he?

[Anonymous No.16917918]

>Aujourd'hui, maman est morte

[Anonymous No.16917956]

>>16917793
how the fuck does he write that

[Anonymous No.16918106]

>>16917793
It really is hard to imagine a better first page. Nabakov really was one of a kind, though I think his writing is at its best when it's viewed in insular moments like this. I find his books as a whole begin to suffer from pacing/structure issues and lose momentum halfway through, but the language is enough to keep me turning pages.

[Anonymous No.16918143]

>>16917793
>lo-lee-ta

cringe and dropped

[Anonymous No.16918173]

>>16918106
The book unironically goes downhill after they fuck, but no one will ever admit this.

[Anonymous No.16918203]

>>16917833
>Calls things cringe
>Doesn't understand what makes good prose
The proof is in the pudding

[Anonymous No.16918292]

>>16918173
Not really, you just read the remainder with post nut syndrome and conflated the feelings.

[Anonymous No.16918308]

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

[Anonymous No.16918430]

>>16918308
I regret starting to read that book without taking note of all the fucking Aurelianos

[Anonymous No.16918537]

>>16917799
fpbp

[Anonymous No.16919330]

>>16918308
book?

[Anonymous No.16919360]

>>16917793
1/10 should have said " Gaze upon this tangle of thorns."

[Anonymous No.16919363]

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

[Anonymous No.16919365]

>>16919330
Just search the character's name, you milksop.

[Anonymous No.16919371]

>>16918203
the proof of the pudding is in the shitting

[Anonymous No.16919382]

>>16919360
Overwrought. I threw up in my mouth when I read your post. Your prose sickens me – you are very much an amateur writer of proses. Never post on this board again.

[Anonymous No.16919398]

>>16917793
A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.

[Anonymous No.16919412]

>>16919382
Just so you know when I read it in my head I automatically change the words to my superior version of masterful English prose.

[Anonymous No.16919419]

>>16919363
Basef

[Anonymous No.16919445]

>>16919360
"Look at my hat."

[Anonymous No.16919465]

>>16919445
"Gaze upon the lid kid."

[Anonymous No.16919494]

>>16917793
I like the intro to Infinite Jest.

[Anonymous No.16919508]

>>16917793
>See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him. Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.

[Anonymous No.16919524]

>>16919365
you could just say it you bitter cunt. Anyway I have to read 100 years as soon as possible, I'm currently reading memoria de mis putas tristes in spanish.

[Anonymous No.16919551]

>>16919524
Not him. It's in my top 5 novels. I loved it. Couldn't put it down.

[Anonymous No.16919572]

>>16917793
>Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on. Can it be that one day, off it goes on, that one day I simply stayed in, in where, instead of going out, in the old way, out to spend day and night as far away as possible, it wasn’t far. Perhaps that is how it began. You think you are simply resting, the better to act when the time comes, or for no reason, and you soon find yourself powerless ever to do anything again. No matter how it happened. It, say it, not knowing what. Perhaps I simply assented at last to an old thing. But I did nothing. I seem to speak, it is not I, about me, it is not about me. These few general remarks to begin with. What am I to do, what shall I do, what should I do, in my situation, how proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmations and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later? Generally speaking. There must be other shifts. Otherwise it would be quite hopeless.

[Anonymous No.16919678]

>There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings

[Anonymous No.16919788]

>>16919508
Came here to post this.
/thread

[Anonymous No.16920189]

>>16917793
Copse 125

[Anonymous No.16920206]

>>16917793
SOMETHING SOMETHING CALL ME ISHMAEL

[Anonymous No.16920231]

>>16919524
I recommend you read Diary of a useless retard who didn't know about reverse search by Bob Alicón.

[Anonymous No.16920233]

>>16919508
That is not even McCarthy's best opening.

[Anonymous No.16920530]

>>16919524
you should read 100 years in spanish then, i thought about sharing the opening line in its original language. cheers anon

'Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.'

[Anonymous No.16920560]

>>16917799
Why do ppl say moncrieff is better? Cause a polack hack said so?
This is way better in french

[Anonymous No.16920578]

>>16917793
EN UN LUGAR DE LA MANCHA

[Anonymous No.16920602]

>>16917793
DQ is my favorite so far
> "then, one day, this lunatic decided to be a knight errant"
> *896 pages left
> ah shit ah fuck how are we gonna fix this

[Anonymous No.16920869]

>>16920231
I'm pretty sure Joe wrote it.
>>16920530
is that hard in spanish? Memoria Is quite difficult to me but at least is a short novel.

[Anonymous No.16920890]

>>16920233
What's his best?

[Anonymous No.16921578]

>>16917793
Lolita is awful writing

[Anonymous No.16921586]

>>16917833
Very cringe. Only considered a master by people with no taste, Nabokovs writing read like an eat pray love quote.

[Anonymous No.16921594]

>>16918106
You need to read more.

[Anonymous No.16921600]

>>16919508
BTFO of Nabokov, and continues

[Anonymous No.16921608]

>>16919508
Rags of snow, great imagery. BTFO of Nabkov and continues for the whole book.

[Anonymous No.16921611]

>>16921608
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-nstDpMFxcNWB59MsvAQrNSZVTaiR9_

[Anonymous No.16921615]

>>16920890
The Road

[z No.16923269]

>>16919678
based pale fire bro

[Anonymous No.16923282]

>>16919508
Why did this remind me so strongly of that extract from the Wind of Winters I made the mistake to read two years ago?

[Anonymous No.16923290]

>>16917799
Fuck, Proust is really a cut above most writers, even those who are considered great.

[Anonymous No.16923550]

>>16917793
The intro is shit just like the rest of the book

[Anonymous No.16924241]

>>16919398
Lol.

[Anonymous No.16924864]

>>16917799
kek

[Anonymous No.16924889]

The wrath of Peleus' son, the direful spring
Of all the Grecian woes, O Goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain,
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore:
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!

Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated hour
Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended Power?
Latona's son a dire contagion spread,
And heaped the camp with mountains of the dead;
The king of men his reverend priest defied,
And, for the king's offence, the people died.

[Anonymous No.16925992]

>>16920890
>Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.
The Crossing and outer dark also have amazing openings.

[Anonymous No.16926003]

>>16917793
yep, you killed your own thread. that paragraph is pure bliss to read

[Anonymous No.16926077]

The introduction from The Picture of Dorian Gray is also a pretty good one imo.

[Anonymous No.16926082]

>>16924864
what's funny?

[Anonymous No.16926110]

>>16919330

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

[Anonymous No.16926122]

unbeaten to this day