Inauspicious opening sentences

In this thread, please share opening sentences of books, articles, reviews etc that instantly set you clicking for the close tab icon.

#1 "What kind of historiography resides in the opening couplet of Manic Street Preachers’ ‘A Design For Life’?"

https://newsocialist.org.uk/design-life-and-production-new-world/

No disrespect to the estimable lads at NS, but there is a dissertation to be written on the baleful influence of the MSPs on millennial socialists.

You should pitch them it then imo

Opening couplet of A Design for Life otm

I love the manics, probably more than almost anyone in north america, but "their politics are kind of a mess" not exactly a bombshell

What sort of politics do they advocate for - some sort of banana suit republic?

In this thread, please share opening sentences of books, articles, reviews etc that instantly set you clicking for the close tab icon.

roasted

Rude.

Im only sorry i missed it being first response obv

Nothin personal the game is the game

Anything that does this:

Line 1: Vague summary of something that sounds like the Trump Administration.
Line 2: Surprise! I'm actually talking about a historical event or something happening elsewhere in the world!

I browsed Oliver Stone's novel A Child's Night Dream in the bookstore when it came out; the blurb on the back promised "Joycean wordplay".

The opening line was something like, "As I walk down the streets of the big shitty..."

I am reminded of that Rachel Cusk novel in which the protagonist's name is revealed - in the first paragraph if not the first sentence - to be Agnes Day.

I browsed Umberto Eco's 'The Prague Cemetery' in a bookshop, having previous enjoyed Foucault's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose:

A passerby on that grey morning in March 1897, crossing at his own risk and peril, place Maubert or the Maub, as it was known in criminal circles (formerly a centre of university life in the middle ages when students flocked there from the Faculty of Arts in Vicas Stramineus or rue de Fouarre, and later a place of execution for apostles of free thought such as Étienne Dolet), would have found himself in one of the few spots in Paris spared from Baron Haussmann's devastations, amidst a tangle of maloderous alleys, sliced in two by the course of the Bièvre which still emerged here, flowing from the bowels of the metropolis, where it had long been confined, before emptying feverish, gasping and verminous into the nearby Seine.

You have to take your borsalino off to Bert there. To be fair to the Nijmegen laureate, this was his customary walk in the home office to look up a reference, so no wonder he grew accustomed to the circuitous route:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czc_KjWji8E

I had a go at cutting out the unnecessary cruft: A passerby on that grey morning in March 1897 would have found himself sliced in two by the course of the Bièvre before emptying feverish, gasping and verminous into the nearby Seine.

That reads like it’s the passerby who is being sliced in two and emptying into the Seine tho, as opposed to the alleys and the Biévre

um...

Oh is that the gag lol

Dry Cleaning: the post-punks who sing about Meghan Markle and Müller Rice

Even Boris Johnson’s closest allies have compared the prime minister to one of Shakespeare’s most tragic heroes: King Lear.