The Bulwer-Lytton award is given annually for the worst first sentence of a novel. Contestants craft deliberately bad opening lines. Molly Ringle took the 2010 prize with this gem:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.

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