What are the greatest first lines in literary history? In a commentary at his weblog, Michael Berube discusses an ongoing list being put together by some academics that so far has over 150 nominations. Berube says “many of them are what you’d expect,” such as “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” or “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” However, there were also some “surprises and flights of whimsy,” such as, from Fahrenheit 451, “It was a pleasure to burn.” (He also liked that they included the famous line from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, “It was a dark and stormy night . . . .” However, says Berube, they “overlooked one of the greatest lines of the late twentieth century: “There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads.” Luckily, he provides the name of the book it’s from.