Gotcha!

How do you choose a book to read?

By recommendation? An author you’re familiar with? A best seller list? A prize winner? The inside flap or back of the cover summary?

I do all of the above.

I also always read the first few sentences or paragraph of a book.

These first lines are usually referred to as “the hook” — meant to capture the reader’s interest.

They also give a sense of the author’s writing style.

A book doesn’t necessarily have to have a catchy “hook” for me to continue reading, but if it does, by golly, I’m “caught.”

Here are a few examples of opening lines that drew me in — and I wasn’t disappointed.


Great “Hooks”


I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.

The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls


I have never looked into my sister’s eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to a beguiling moon. I’ve never used an airplane bathroom. Or worn a hat. Or been kissed like that.

The Girls – Lori Lansens


Life changes fast.
Life changes in an instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.

The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion


Mira was hiding in the ladies’ room. She called it that, even though someone had scratched out the ladies’ in the sign on the door and written women’s underneath. She called it that out of thirty-eight years of habit, and until she saw the cross-out on the door, had never thought about it.

The Women’s Room – Marilyn French


It’s morning. For now, night is over. It’s time for the bad news. I think of the bad news as a huge bird, with the wings of a crow and the face of my Grade Four schoolteacher, sparse bun, rancid teeth, wrinkly frown…

Moral Disorder — Margaret Atwood


I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice — not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

A Prayer for Owen Meany — John Irving