The folks at Lit Reactor have come up with their top ten best opening lines of novels over on their website.  Some are expected, such as Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Stephen King’s The Gunslinger (the first line of which appears on many a T-shirt), but others came as a bit of a surprise. Tolkein’s The Hobbit came in at 5 with “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” and Ray Bradbury’s famous Sci-fi story Farenheit 451, which incidentally is required reading in any Library related university course, was the runner up!

Dickens  failed to make the cut with “It was the best of times it was the worst of times” and surely Doug Adams’ “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun” should have had a mention?

However, JK Rowling’s 7 book epic starting with: “Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much”  is probably rightfully left off.

What do you think should have made the cut? Are there any you think should be forgotten?