First Line Fun!
I was over at Look At That Book and saw she had a thing called First Line Fridays. Now, I don’t want to wait until Friday, or do it every week, but it sounded like a fun thing to do occassionally!
Here are the first lines of ten novels (if the book has a prologue, I have taken the first line from there). If you know what book it comes from, hooray! Leave your answer(s) in a comment at the bottom. Please don’t cheat and use Google – but if you suspect you know what book it is from, and you have it on your shelf, you may look it up at the source.
And go!
- The house stood on a slight rise at the edge of the village.
- The Summer King knelt before her.
- It was the start of the Summer of the Late Rose.
- The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane.
- There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.
- This inscription could be seen on the glass door of a small shop, but naturally this was only the way it looked if you were inside the dimly lit shop, looking out at the street through the plateglass door.
- The play – for which Briony had designed the posters, programmes and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper- was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.
- After a year of hunting, I finally caught up with Sarah.
- Each year, at the end of March, a great fair was held in Cria, the capital of Galla.
- It was a nice day.

















#2 is Wicked LOVELY!!!
that’s it
1. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?
2. Wicked Lovely.
And that’s all I got. Lol. I like it!
@Reverie: Yep, you got that one right.
@Jo: You got #2, but #1 is not a Harry Potter book. One of the other lines is from a Harry Potter book though.
I knew number 2 as soon as I read it, I read the start of the Wicked Lovely e-book.
#4 is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
#6 is The Neverending Story, I remember that one. Just the fact that it starts with “this inscription”; I remembered the book had an inscription on the first page.
Those are the only ones that I know.
@Kiandra: Yep, you’re correct on all counts.
I considered putting the inscription on there, but it would have been too difficult to do.
I think that number 7 is Atonement?
@Aisling: Correct!
#1 = The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (after the note about the book)?
#4 = one of the HP books and #7 = Atonement, but those were already guessed.
No clue about the others.
I believe #3 is Redwall by Brian Jacques. <3
@Meg: Correct!
@Hannah: I am so glad someone got that one! Although I’m not surprised that it was you who got it, since you have the fanlisting, yes?
“The Summer of the Late Rose” so evocative a phrase, even without knowing about the story behind that rose.
@Everyone: Come on! 5, 8, 9 and 10 still need titles! Do you need clues?
5 – Stardust?
@Ashling: Correct!
8, 9 and 10 to go, people!