There’s been a lot of talk about ignoring ’24 and striving for ’25, but I am not in the habit of giving away entire years any longer. I would have happily leapt over my junior and senior years of high-school, just to get out of my small town existence and launch my life in the “big” city. There was the year I graduated into a recession, couldn’t find a job, and lost my mother that I wouldn’t mind giving back to the universe, but aside from those I have been mostly happy, even if it took a while to arrive at that conclusion, with the years and fate that I have been given.

I do love a beginning with all its inherent freshness, nearly as much as I like plucking a hardcover book off the shelf in some tiny local bookstore, and peeling past the first couple of pages – prologues, TOC’s, dedications, and getting straight to that very first line of prose. If it captures my attention, transports me to another place and time, puts me in the tidal flats, the dusty sun-dried attack of a third story Victorian, nestled on an overgrown hill, or the mechanized body of the new and improved robotic companion doll, well I am most likely going to buy that book, despite the stack that still awaits my time and attention, on the bedside table.

In honor of the new year, here are some of my very favorite beginnings from the books that managed to capture my attention and compelled me to push all the other items on my To Do list down a notch or two. A good book should always take precedence over all other obligations, work and sleep included, because the doors those words may open…well, the possibilities are boundless.

I hope you will enjoy these first lines as much as I have:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

“Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Sampson Mazer, he was Samson Masur – a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice Jewish boy to a professional builder of worlds – and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam”. – a lifetime past in a single sentence. from boy to man. renowned in his youth, famous enough in adulthood to be known only by Mazer, like Madonna, Tiger, Prince or Bono, they need no other introduction - so we ask ourselves, “how is it I don’t know Mazer”? Let me find out who this character is, and what he’s all about.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

“First I got myself born”. — intriguing in that it seems to suggest that this newborn did it on their own, no help to be had from the mother or another, which begs the question, “why”? 

O Beautiful by Jung Yun

“Men talk to her on planes”. — come on now! Don’t you just want to know why? Is it her stunning beauty? Notoriety? Some other mesmerizing quality? Maybe she travels with a snake? Who knows, but I am certain of this, I am going to find out.

Unreasonable Hospitality: The remarkable power of giving people more than they expect by Will Guidara

“At home we were on top of the world”. — wherever they were at the time of the writing of that sentence, I suspect, top of the world is not where they were….how far had they fallen and why?

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

“For the first six days of Walter Waters life he was not an only child”. — car crash that killed the family leaving Walter as an orphan? Mother that gave up her second or third child because she couldn’t afford to care for him? Died in childbirth and the children were scattered among relatives or neighbors?

First sentences can really pack a punch and leave you with more questions than answers. We humans hate not knowing so we read on, picking up the pieces of the puzzle, fitting them carefully together, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, until our understanding is complete. When the story is particularly powerful, it stays with us long after we read the last line. We seek out others that have read it so that we can relive the moments of insight and beauty, pain, and the human struggle – our desire to connect, reconstruct and carve new pathways within our brains, and in the ways in which we approach our lives. 

May this new year bring you beautiful beginnings.