Stupid memes
Feb. 22nd, 2003 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tahnanEveryone's doing it! Well, Shelly, at least. And I think Pamela Dean did it in her lj, so, hey/
These are the first lines of some of my favorite books and the like--not my favorite first lines, but first lines of favorites. I didn't try to keep it to ten, and I left out some things that probably should be on this list just by my method of generation, which was "walk over to my shelf and pull down favorites."
I'll probably post their sources at some point, though people're welcome to identify them if they like. Or just revel in their firstlineness.
In no real order:
1. Always remember that they come from the desert. [Out of fairness, that skips the prologue, which also has a pretty fine opening sentence.]
2. John...John...John. Okay. John. John.
3. The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. [That one I can do from memory.]
4. There were five of us--Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger.
5. The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.
6. It was a nice day. [Take that, Bulwer-Lytton!]
7. Septimus, what is carnal embrace?
8. There is a similarity, if I may be permitted an excursion into tenuous metaphor, between the feel of a chilly breeze and the feel of a knife's blade, as either is laid across the back of the neck.
9. I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.
10. Your father is about to ask me the question. [Short story. Exquisite.]
11. When you get down to the bottom of the bottle, as Momma used to say, this is the story of how I became a mother. [Not my favorite opening line by the author, but this book is much better than the one that opens "'Poker is a man's game,' Josh's daddy used to say, 'because it isn't fair.'"]
12. His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god.
13. Can't sleep? [OK, it's not much by way of an opening line of dialogue, but neither is "Who's there?" and that one's a classic too.]
These are the first lines of some of my favorite books and the like--not my favorite first lines, but first lines of favorites. I didn't try to keep it to ten, and I left out some things that probably should be on this list just by my method of generation, which was "walk over to my shelf and pull down favorites."
I'll probably post their sources at some point, though people're welcome to identify them if they like. Or just revel in their firstlineness.
In no real order:
1. Always remember that they come from the desert. [Out of fairness, that skips the prologue, which also has a pretty fine opening sentence.]
2. John...John...John. Okay. John. John.
3. The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. [That one I can do from memory.]
4. There were five of us--Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger.
5. The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.
6. It was a nice day. [Take that, Bulwer-Lytton!]
7. Septimus, what is carnal embrace?
8. There is a similarity, if I may be permitted an excursion into tenuous metaphor, between the feel of a chilly breeze and the feel of a knife's blade, as either is laid across the back of the neck.
9. I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.
10. Your father is about to ask me the question. [Short story. Exquisite.]
11. When you get down to the bottom of the bottle, as Momma used to say, this is the story of how I became a mother. [Not my favorite opening line by the author, but this book is much better than the one that opens "'Poker is a man's game,' Josh's daddy used to say, 'because it isn't fair.'"]
12. His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god.
13. Can't sleep? [OK, it's not much by way of an opening line of dialogue, but neither is "Who's there?" and that one's a classic too.]
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-22 02:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-22 06:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-22 02:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-22 03:12 pm (UTC)3 is nagging at me. Neuromancer? Something cyberpunky? 7 and 9 are also nagging, but I'm not even going to guess.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-22 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-22 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-22 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-22 03:48 pm (UTC)Maybe I'll spread this meme, but in my own journal. (Would've definitely done it earlier this week, my state of health+boredom was right up there for poring through my bookshelves for first lines.)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-23 06:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-02-23 08:04 am (UTC)Woo!!! #5 is great!!!
Date: 2003-02-22 11:18 pm (UTC)And creepily enough,
Date: 2003-02-22 11:20 pm (UTC)