First Lines Fridays: March 4th, 2016
Welcome to a brand new feature on BookCrushin: First Lines Fridays! Each week I will pick a YA or NA book from my shelves and copy the first line, in an attempt to acquaint you with some new reads or reintroduce you to old favorites. We will have an accompanying Instagram pic to go along with our choices each week so check out #firstlinesfridays!
First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? If you want to join the meme be sure to check out Wandering Words, and here are her rules below.
The rules:
- Pick a book off your shelf (or your current read) and open to the first page.
- Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.
- Finally…reveal the book!
For our very first edition, I chose the first line from my favorite book. It’s something of a classic, so you might not have a hard time guessing the title.
When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.
So, what book is this from? Keep reading to find out!
It’s from The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. I read this book when I was in sixth grade, so I would have been about 12—25 years ago. I must have read this book 50 times that year, and each time, I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. To me, this is the penultimate YA book and a must-read for every human being. S.E. Hinton wrote this when she was 16—sixteen! I will always be grateful to the teacher who introduced me to this book (he also introduced me to other classics such as Where the Red Fern Grows and The Book of Three), and I will always hold The Outsiders in the highest regard. If you haven’t read this, you must. You MUST!
No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he’s got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his two friends—true friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. And when it comes to the Socs—a vicious gang of rich kids who enjoy beating up on “greasers” like him and his friends—he knows that he can count on them for trouble. But one night someone takes things too far and Ponyboy’s world is turned upside down.