The First-Line Meme
Wednesday, January 29th, 2003 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
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.
