TTT: Favorite Debut Novels

Top Ten Tuesday: My Favorite Debut Novels with opening lines

(listed in chronological order)

Sense and Sensibility by Jan Austen (1818)
"The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex."

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day."

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)
"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)
"Here is the house."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the galaxy lies an unregarded yellow sun."

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997)
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003)
"It was 7 minutes after midnight."

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)
"First the colors."

Looking for Alaska by John Green (2005)
"The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party."

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022)
"Back in 1961, when women wore shirtwaist dresses and joined garden clubs and drove legions of children around in seatbeltless cars without giving it a second though; back before anyone knew there'd even be a sixties movement, much less one that its participants would spend the next sixty years chronicling; back when the big wars were over and the secret wars had just begun and people were starting to think fresh and believe everything was possible, the thirty-year-old mother of Madeline Zott rose before dawn every morning and felt certain of just one thing: her life was over."

I am stopping. I had no idea how many debut novels I love when I started this list.

-Anne