There was a poll that stated—Rowling’s opening line in the HP series is one of best in the world. Someone posted about how there are a bunch of other opening statements that are better.
Here’s one of my personal favorites, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in English):
“It is inevitable — the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
“It was a nice day.
All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.”
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman #books#bookstodon#OpeningLines#GoodOmens
There had been something loose about the station dock all morning, skulking in amongst the gantries and the lines and the canisters which were waiting to be moved, lurking wherever shadows fell among the rampway accesses of the many ships at dock at Meetpoint.
-CJ Cherryh, Pride of Chanur
@DocCarms@bookstodon “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” — One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 👌
@mikebaarda@DocCarms@bookstodon I think you have a point, but it's kind of context-dependent. Personally, when I read that line, sure my interest is piqued a little, but I'm also immediately primed to be looking for an explanation of the things you mentioned, and I'm not likely to have a good time reading the story until I start getting that explanation (or at least some justification for why I need to wait for it, like if the POV character is trying to find out). So it's kind of a high-risk high-reward maneuver: an opening line that introduces mysterious terms for story elements (such as, but not limited to, characters) can backfire badly if the rest of the story doesn't deliver details at the right pace.
It's also definitely possible to overdo it by throwing so many unfamiliar terms at the reader so fast that they get turned off. Not the case here, of course, but other books definitely do it.
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. And then the dragons arrived.
Top Tier Tinder Pick Up Lines (www.youtube.com)
I'm guessing these results are US centric, so I won't be trying "Ahoy there!"...