"Among the other public building in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter."
Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist.
I'm reading a Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist as an homage to his 200th birthday.
I like this first line first because it is so expansive and deep. So many colons, semi-colons and commas, it keeps going on and on and on. It pulls the reader in with it. Secondly I can almost feel the camera zooming in on this workhouse, dark streets of a 19th century village, the narrator speaking in a deep bass voice, then the view twisting and turning into the workhouse until the image stops the the eyes fall on a baby, Oliver.
The next passage keeps the intrigue going.
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