Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Favorite Beginnings &/or Endings of Books!

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created & hosted @ The Broke and the Bookish. 

For more info about it, check out the post HERE.

For this week's theme, I had trouble deciding if I should list fav beginning & endings of books, or fav opening & ending lines, so I guess I'll start & see what this TTT ends up to be ;)

So, My Top Ten Favorite Beginnings/Endings of Books are:

My Favorite Beginnings & Endings:

~ The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

Ok, so first of all, I have to admit that I absolutely love all the openings & endings of all the Harry Potter books. But, I especially love the opening chapter of Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince - The Other Minister. Why? Because it was different & so, so funny, and I loved the way J.K. used it to demonstrate perfectly how the happenings in the wizarding world influenced the real world. 

I also love the last lines of the epilogue in Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, because they were perfect ending for such an amazing series:

 "The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well."

~ The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Opening line: 

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife."

To be honest, the whole first chapter is one of my fav beginnings, but I'm not typing it all ;) Also, I absolutely love the ending (ok, I love the whole book), and the last line was perfect also:  

"But between now and then, there was Life; and Bod walked into it with his eyes and his heart wide open.".

~ Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

The opening lines:  

"It begins, as most things begin, with a song.

In the beginning, after all, were the words, and they came with a tune. That was how the world was made, how the void was divided, how the lands and the stars and the dreams and the gods and the animals, how all of them came into the world.

They were sung.

The great beasts were sung into existence, after the Singer had done with the planets and the hills and the trees and the oceans and the lesser beasts. The cliffs that bound existence were sung, and the hunting grounds, and the dark.

Songs remain. They last. The right song can turn an emperor into a laughingstock, can bring down dynasties. A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs."

I love this opening & one of my most fav quotes is actually from this book (you can see it at the top of my blog), and I absolutely adore this whole book, and I also love the last line, too:

"Together the man and the boy danced their way back up the sand to the house, singing a wordless song that they made up as they went along, which lingered in the air even after they had gone in for breakfast."

~ Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

I love this book's opening chapter, it delves right into it, and it shows the humor, sadness & uniqueness to this book. Here are the opening lines:

"I am dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it. I'm sorry I can't properly introduce myself, but I don't have a name any more. Hardly any of us do. We lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries. Mine might have started with an 'R', but that's all I have now. It's funny because back when I was alive, I was always forgetting other people's names. My friend 'M' says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can't smile, because your lips have rotted off.".

Also, the last lines are perfect, too, and really powerful, but I decided not to share them, because I think it will spoil the impact of the story to those that haven't read it.

My Favorite Beginnings:

~ Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

The opening lines:  

"In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes."

~ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The opening line:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." 

~ Everfound by Neal Shusterman

The Skinjacker trilogy is amazing, but my fav opening is the prologue in the last book Everfound, which goes like this:

"If you’ve just woken up to find yourself in Everlost, you might be scared and confused. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. Sort of." 

My Favorite Endings:

~ The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams Chima

The ending of The Crimson Crown is one of the best book series endings (Seven Realms). Both the last chapter & the epilogue were absolutely amazing, and they both had the perfect spoiler-free last lines:

The last chapter's last line: "But, as it turned out, they were just getting started.".

The epilogue's last line: "Sometimes a dream is enough.".

If you've read the book, you know why they're perfect for the characters they relate to, both in the last chapter & the epilogue.

~ I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Last lines:

"...and I hear the words again from this morning.

If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did, then maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can leave beyond what they're capable of.

And that's when I realize.

In a sweet, cruel, beautiful moment of clarity, I smile, watch a crack in the cement, and speak to Audrey and the sleeping Doorman. I tell them what I'm telling you:

I'm not the messenger at all.

I'm the message.".

~ The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The last lines:

"I looked back at the farmhouse in my rear-view mirror, and a trick of the light made it seem as if two moons hung in the sky above it, like a pair of eyes watching me from above: one moon perfectly full and round, the other, its twin on the other side of the sky, a half-moon.
Curiously I turned in my seat and looked back: a single half-moon hung over the farmhouse, peaceful and pale and perfect.
I wondered where the illusion of the second moon had come from, but I only wondered for a moment, and then I dismissed it from my thoughts. Perhaps it was an after-image, I decided, or a ghost: something that had stirred in my mind for a moment, so powerfully that I believed it to be real, but now was gone, and faded into the past like a memory forgotten, or a shadow into the dusk.".

~ The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The last lines:

"All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the book thief and I say it now to you.

A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR
I am haunted by humans.".

~ Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

The last line:

 

"It occurred to me then that for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had absolutely no desire to log back into the OASIS.".

This sentence was the perfect ending to this book, and I love the message of it.

Ok, so it seems I ended up with more than 10, it's my own fault for not numbering them, but when I noticed, I didn't want to delete any after I already wrote them ;)

What about you? 

Leave me your TTT links!