The First-Line Meme

Wednesday, January 29th, 2003 12:22 pm
[personal profile] tamaranth
"First lines of your ten favourite novels," it goes.
Only ten?



"My dear cousin, I wonder how you will greet these words: indeed, I wonder how you will receive into your hands the paper that bears them, as I think you cannot be in expectation of correspondence from me." [Freedom and Necessity, Stephen Brust and Emma Bull]

"Lymond is back." [The Game of Kings, Dorothy Dunnett]

"The photographs of that time, printed from glass plate negatives, reveal a landscape at once more barren and roomy, a world puzzlingly larger (not merely less cluttered) than the world bequeathed to us." [Winterking, Paul Hazel]

"The sun was setting in a flood of scarlet and gold as a small white van cruised to a halt on the Caversham Road." [Bold as Love, Gwyneth Jones]

"A week after midsummer, when the festival fires were cold, and decent people were in bed an hour after sunset, not lying dry-mouthed in dark rooms at midday, a young man named Sobran Jodeau stole two of the freshly bottled wines to baptise the first real sorrow of his life." [The Vintner's Luck, Elizabeth Knox]

"My friend Hergal had killed himself again. This was the fortieth time he had crashed his bird-plane onto the Zeefahr Monument and had to have a new body made." [Drinking Sapphire Wine, Tanith Lee]

"The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet." [Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian]

"Mars was empty before we came." [Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson]

"Even dead gods reign. Even the hapless fear for their happiness." [Medea, Christa Wolf]

"It was starting to end, after what seemed like most of eternity to me." [Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny]

In other news: there is no news. There is no work (or not much). There is a charity shop in Greenwich where the books are arranged by colour of spine.

How am I? Look out of the window*. If it's sunny, I'm probably quite cheerful.

*my window, not yours.

Date: Wednesday, January 29th, 2003 05:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] daemongirl.livejournal.com
hiya you star :-0 you never added me like you promised.... is it cos youv found out how boring i am ? lol
hard day of school, hardly any time to read ;'(

Date: Wednesday, January 29th, 2003 04:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lproven.livejournal.com
I think I should take that as a reading list... And K has some of 'em downstairs...

Date: Thursday, January 30th, 2003 01:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gummitch.livejournal.com
What, no Mary Doria Russell?

Date: Thursday, January 30th, 2003 05:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] marypcb.livejournal.com
I can't decide between first lines of ten favourites, or ten favourite first lines, which is different!

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