Please please please do the last lines of classics. Most people probably aren’t going to have the full book ruined by one line at the end. And a lot of people, especially students, look at those powerful last line without reading the book. I just want to see how passionate you get when ranking the last line of the Great Gatsby, “So we beat on, boats against true current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Like fuck me dude. What a great ending!!!

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is known for its iconic opening paragraph, but I think the first line is powerful on its own too: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."

I wonder if Kurt Vonnegut was intentionally referencing both Moby Dick (a book about a whale), and the biblical story of Jonah (who was swallowed by a whale.)

“Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure.” from The Stranger by Camus is absolutely one of the best lines. It sets the tone and character for the rest of the novel.

Your analyses are so brilliant. I’m an English teacher studying to be a librarian…. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed this morning but your video swiftly reminded me why I love literature and assured me I’m on the right path. Thank you so much!

Ariel cursing because literature is *that good is so wholesome.

If you ever write down the first liners that you come up with, it’d be fun to see how you’d rank your own lines (and to see what some of them are or what kind of story you’d apply them to)

12:27 While we do SAY it is 13:00 o'clock, the clock would never strike 13. Imagine it being 23:00 (11pm) and the churches / clocks would have to ring 23 times. Or the numbers on the clock having to go from 0 to 23/24. That is a bit much. So it actually is a truly unusual element as ON THE CLOCK it is 1, not 13. So you were not off with your vibe here :D

One of my favorite first lines is from N. K. Jemisin’s book The fifth season, “Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.”

When you read that first line to Peter Pan, I also thought “instantly iconic”, BECAUSE IT IS LITERALLY THE PREMISE OF THE BOOK think about it, when you’re explaining Neverland to someone, you say exactly that! GENIUS!

I really enjoy these videos. I also wanted to point out to you that in the Bible, Jonah was swallowed up by a large fish “whale” and was trapped there for 3 days and 3 nights. I thought that was an interesting tie between Cat’s Cradle and Moby-Dick. 😊

I find it interesting that "It was a dark and stormy night..." is universally lambasted and derided as one of the most awful openings to any book, but "It was a bright cold day in April..." is one of the most iconic.

For me, “Maman died today” from The Stranger by Albert Camus is the most iconic one. It is so striking and throws us into the story right away. Also, saying such a sentence in the most casual, plain way gives us a big hint of what this book is going to be like.

Love these! Have you seen the ad for Master Class that Margaret Atwood did? She said something like “a better beginning for Little Red Riding Hood might be ‘ It was dark inside the wolf.’” YAAASSSSS!!

Here is one of my favorite first lines, from Kafka's Metamorphosis, in German: "Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt." (English: "When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect") This line is cool, not only because of the nice satisfying way "ungeheueren Ungeziefer" rolls off the tongue and the immediate interesting start to the book but also because it is notably difficult to translate (basically every translation of Die Verwandlung has a pretty different first line, I would recommend Susan Bernofsky's essay "On Translating Kafka's 'Metamorphosis'"). Much of the language is a bit vague and many of the words are negations (with the "un-" prefix) and that nuance is hard to get in English. For example, "Ungeziefer" invokes vermin, specifically unpleasant bugs (it's never specified at all what Gregor was transformed into). "Unruhig" literally means "uncalm." Kafka uses "ruhig" (calm) and "unruhig" (troubled) in contrast in the novella a lot, and the use of (un)ruhig just can't be translated very well into English. The novella as a whole has a lot of these translation issues, the German has a lot of these subtle little nuances that add dimension to the novella that you can't replicate in English. Also, fun detail: because of German sentence structure, "transformed" ("verwandelt") is the very last word in the first line of the original. The last three words in the sentence (horrible insect and transformed) are the most interesting ones

Btw, I think 1984 is playing off Elliot’s Wasteland (like so many books we read and never realise do too): “April is the cruelest month”.

The Bell Jar - the best. I feel so sad for thinking about the books she never got to write and we never got to read!

So glad you did this again! I loved the first one ❤️📚

I think what you said about 13:00 really shows how your own upbringing and culture influence the perception of a book, not just specifically personal interpretations. Like I personally would interpret the bright cold day as like a ice cold because that what the coldest days where I’m from are like. The clear ones are always the coldest. But then 13 as a time is just so normal to me (I’m from Europe) that I only see it as a bad omen because of the 13 and wouldn’t ever think of futuristic anything. This just really excites me, how differently we can read not even the same book but even the same sentence!

Yes more of these! Also something interesting is that Jonah is a name of a character in the bible and the character is famously known to have been swallowed by a whale. Something else to tie in with Moby Dick!

One of my favorite first lines is “A typewriter shattered my destiny.” It sounds even better in the original Spanish: “Una máquina de escribir reventó mi destino.” From “The Time in Between” by María Dueñas. A historical novel about a young seamstress in WW2 Spain who is forged from a starry-eyed lover to a formidable wartime spy for the Allies. In the TV series, Adriana Ugarte portrays the growth of a daring, resourceful, intelligent female protagonist.

Please do last lines of classics!!! Or one where you compare first and last lines of classics to see how well they encompass the book as a whole!!

Would love to see more of these videos but with different genres! I also feel exactly the same about introductions. The amount of times I have had a book spoiled for me because I felt like I had to read the introduction first... I now exclusively read introductions after finishing a book, unless it's something where I am already familiar with the plot and don't care about being spoiled.

I’ve never paid too much attention to first lines before, but now I want to go back and reread the first line of every book I’ve read!

I always think of Anna Karenina when I think of first lines. Great video idea, btw!

And Vonnegut with that Jonah and the Whale biblical connection for the double reference... madness. Thank you for doing this, it was delightful 🥰

My favorite is Franz Kafka 'The Metamorphosis' is “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” gotta be up there at the top!

I’m currently watching this video on our tv in our family room and my 2 year old daughter said “who is that?” And I replied “her name is Ariel.” And my daughter says “ARIEL?! She’s a princess!!!” Melted my heart. My daughter thinks you’re a princess, Ariel! 🥹🤣❤️

Hello Ariel ! About 100 años de Soledad...I am glad you put it in "Iconic". Those first lines are one of the most crazy line in literrature( with maybe Proust's A la Recherche du temps perdu) For 100 años de Soledad, I recommend to read one chapter every night : 20 chapters, 20 nights. Make it like a "rendez-vous" with the book. Print the family tree and keep it while you read it for reference. .maybe read it in Spanish ? I am french and Colombian, raised in Paris and I still live there. and I speak Spanish too like you... To read it in spanish really helped to enter in the book for me. To get the atmosphere, it reminded me of holidays in Colombia, of the people I would meet there. I primarily read in French and always thought that reading in Spanish would be harder...turns out, it is not. Thank you for your videos !!!

I gasped because I'm yearning to secure an ancestral hall and I don't even know what that means

omg, this reminds me of that ad for Margaret Atwood's online course where she goes "it was dark... inside the wolf..." OMG THE CHILLS!

I absolutely love this series -- please keep doing them!!

Quick thought on introductions: I love them because I like to have an idea of the deeper conversations surrounding the book going into it (e.g. themes to look out for) but at the same time they are sooooo spoilery! It's risky business. I think they deffo need to be split up between introduction and afterword better!!

The atmosphere in this video is so relaxing, inviting and perfectly bookish! The soft lighting and stacks of books are just so comforting.

I love your videos, Ariel! One of my favourite openings is: "The next day, no one died." Death with Interruptions by José Saramago ❤

Not a classic, but a very well done first line to a fantasy book: "The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed". --Stephen King (The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger)

my jaw dropped at that edition of 1984. i’m so jealous ariel! so happy you made a part 2!

i agree dont do last lines! Last lines are so resolute and you work all the way up to that final concluding moment of the novel. i love last lines so much that i am always terrified when i am just checking how many pages are in the book that i will accidentally see the last line. my heart literally beats faster as im checking page numbers haha

“Call me, Ishmael. Feel absolutely free to call me any hour of the day or night at the office or at home . . .” Peter deVries, The Vale of Laughter

Watched your video today (discovered you today too). A lazy Saturday evening, and my husband and I just played your game ourselves. We each pulled 5 books off the shelves and read/ranked the first lines. We found that for us, we needed something between "informative" and "classic" - we decided on "inviting." Anyway, thank you for the entertainment, and I'll be watching you!

I would love any videos about first (or last!) lines in books! when I was a kid and my mom took me to the library I would always read her the first line of each book I got on the ride home and we would judge them together to decide which book I would read first lol

This reminds me of something my MFA creative writing professor would say, which is that your first paragraph is about “hook, pull, hold.” Hook the reader’s attention, pull them in with more interesting info/voice, and hold their attention there for the ride. The iconic and classic first lines are definitely hooky!

You are so much fun! I enjoy your channel very much and this one was particularly fun. My favorite first line ever is from Andy Weir's "The Martian"...it begins "I'm pretty much f*%ked." I was hooked from that moment on and couldn't wait to see why. Also it is the first time EVER in my 55 years of reading, that I have remembered an opening line of a book and quoted it. Keep up the great work, Ariel.

My favourite openers is The Hobbit's. Absolutely iconic, I'd say. _In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit._ Everyone knows that from memory.

I just love that you did another one of this!! Since I saw the first video last year, I always take close attention to the first lines and categorize them. 🤩

I love these videos! I would definitely watch a video on the last lines, I feel like it would make me want to read the book. Can you also do a video on the first line of books you haven't read? I love how you talk us through your thought process and would love to see your immediate reactions to something you haven't seen before. ❤️

“We’re just here having some fun” Successfully executed! 👏💜 ABSOLUTELY LAST LINES. My reasoning is twofold, it’s not often enough information to be a spoiler and it may lead to the choice to read a book that’s just a maybe. As in, that’s such a curious last line I must know more!

I love you tier ranking books, definitely do more! I really like the idea of ranking the last lines of classics :)

I’m so happy that you made another one!!!! The first video is one of my favorites videos on the whole booktube, and yes we need more, all the different versions you can think of

I love this - it really grounds me into the word by word way that stories are built. So much of the time, we speak in abstract and high level discussions of plot, character, theme, and don't bring it back to specificity. And I love the energy you bring to each line - the excitement and the level at which the little moments of these books affect you. That energy is the high I'm chasing every time I pick up a new book.

i love these videos!! analyzing first lines of books is so fun, especially after reading the whole work and knowing the full context. i also think a video about the last lines would be really cool :D

Please continue to do these videos if you can! They are WONDERFUL!! Some of these books are being added and re-added to read again on my reading lists :)

I would watch this video with all kinds of books idk why I love this sooooooo much! It's just fun and making me want to read/rered these and I immediately went and rewatched the first one it's just I LOVE. Seriously no matter how many of these videos you make with however bad, classic, or odd of books I will watch it

What a great idea! I’ve always said, I couldn’t immerse myself in reading the classics because I became a young mom…..then I realized I immersed myself in motherhood. Although I’ll always be a mom, I have more time to read….even if it’s 1 book every few weeks or months ….. this will help me decide! 💖💐📚🤓 Very Fascinating….I suppose as artists and musicians inspire (copy) each other, it’s found in writing too….

Please do another of these videos!! I loved this so much

This was so much fun to watch! Really got me thinking about the first lines of my favourite books. Immediately went and watched the first video you did of this because I loved it so much !

you inspire me to read more classics with these videos! and they're so much fun! please do more videos to talk about classics.

Haha, I think Conor is right - I'm always scared I will see the last line when I'm reading a book and want to check how many pages it has 😅 But I would probably watch the video, just skipping the ones I haven't read!

YESSSSS i loved the first video you made ranking classics based on their first line and I couldn't have been happier seeing a second video! I love hearing you talk about classics.

This video is so underrated! So interesting to hear your analyses!

I LOVED this video. Please make more of this fun analysis stuff! Having you interpret and break down the first lines just tickles my reader/writer brain. ☺️

I’m definitely up for more of these! This is a lot of fun. BTW - LOVE the tier categories!!

I reaaaally want to read all the classics you did in this series and film it for fun. I really get hyped for reading when watching you videos. You are so good with your words!

I LOVE Ariel's chill yet passionate vibes in these videos. Yes please to all the ranking first line videos. All the genres. And the last lines!! I'll be spoiled I don't even care!!!! I love to get a glimpse of where I'm going. It's about the journey, ya know. And I could just listen to Ariel talk books all day long.

just gotta say i love your vibe love your voice it's so round and comforting!! can't describe it it's almost like vanilla. anyhow! thanks for the video!

I think this might be one of my favorite video of yours! I myself studied French and English literature and I loved your analysis and how you put those first lines into perspective with the rest of the novels (and I loved that you used the analysis terms, that brought back memories haha) ! And PLEASE do a video on last lines, those are my personal favorites 🤗

When I was a kid, anytime I started reading a book or would be browsing shelves at the library, I'd always check the first and last words to see if the author was trying to send a hidden message lol. Love these videos, first and last lines are so interesting and powerful.

I love this format so much! Thanks :)

It‘d be interesting to see you rank the first lines of your favourite contemporary books. This video was a lot of fun and makes me excited about reading, thank you!

Great video! Waited for it for a long time haha - thank you ♡

Thank you so much for the First Lines video. I feel back in English class again, Creative Writing classes. So much fun! Please keep doing these videos.

Lol, I love the introductions! Especially if written by the author, you get a great feel for their writing style, humor, etc.

Love the way you consider and dissect each line, I could listen for hours! And yes to the last lines video!

I like the categories for the tiers, this is pretty cool. I’m a sucker for a great first line in a book. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is sooooooo good!!!! I just finished it, holy cow! Amazing!

I love these videos, so interesting and fun! The Peter Pan one has got to be my favourite of these ones. Also, I'd enjoy the last lines video, sounds really cool.

When you were trying to remember the first line of Great Gatsby, I was too. Only, I remembered the first part, so it was very satisfying when you said the rest of the sentence 😂 Great video!

I started watching you on the house renovation videos because I love watching house renovations, car renovations and campers. I love arts and crafts but a few years ago I decided to start reading books so I could learn about all types of things. Now I read every day and I have enjoyed watching your videos about books. I just hope I can remember all the books you have showed that I really want to read. Lol

Love that you made another one of these!

I flippin love these videos. They’re so fun to watch and think about!! 💕

Eyyy so happy to see a new video from you Ariel!! Literally checked your channel yesterday cause I had a feeling you had posted xD

I most certainly did have fun with that video! I would love to see more like this because I had a blast :) I'm going to that first video you made right now :) Thanks for sharing!

All of the ideas you have for your next videos seem great! I'm down for all of them!

loves these videos! would be super cool to see a series!!

omggg i’ve been waiting for this part 2

I love this video concept! Your analysis of these first lines was so entertaining to watch! 🤍

Loved this video! I hope you do a last line one too. Maybe do the first and last line? See how they compare to each other and which is stronger so to speak.

I love the idea of doing last lines. Also, it would be fun to rank books by one author--pick a prolific author and rank the first lines of several of their books.

Loved this. Will happily watch all variations you come up with.

okay please do more of these!!

you are seriously the best. nice work! Great collection to work through :D

omg and you could also do a video or something like that where you create new first lines to the books that you didn't feel were good or did justice to the rest of the story!!! love this series btw

Love this series! Honestly, a YA edition would be really fun and entertaining.

I think it'll be cool to do it with the last sentence of the book as well, there are some pretty impressive ones. Thank you again Ariel for your amazing videos!

Omg!! The first video became my favorite and watched it so many times, I’m so happy there’s a second part

I absolutely love this concept and your analysis of each opening line!

This was so fun! I love the idea of ranking first lines. I think it really sets the mood for the rest of the story

I didn’t know that about the “clocks striking 13” being a colloquialism!

This is the first video of yours that i’ve seen. You are so passionate about literature and charismatic as a KZfaq personality. I am definitely going go end up binging your content. I love how you convinced yourself by repeating the first lines and by reading more indepth. I'm an English literature and creative writing student currently. Hoping to write classic amazing first lines for people like you to enjoy. I also just enjoy reading. But I get slumped a lot due to vision issues. But seeing content creators like you being so passionate relights a fire in my soul and passion. Thank you :)

This is the first video i watch on your channel and i absolutely love your energy. Thanks for a great time.

HI ARIEL!!!!!!!!! OH HOW IVE MISSED U!! HOPE YOURE DOING GREAT!💖💖💖 (love love love these first line videos!! I’m not a classics gal so I wouldn’t mind the last line video at all but I understand your hesitation lol)