First lines meme

[resonant]

Note to those who have never had a sinus infection: If you lose your sense of smell, parmesan cheese tastes like nothing at all.

Can't resist the "first lines of ten books," though in this case it's just "first lines of the best ten books I can find on my bookshelves."



"It's a port city."
(Samuel Delany, Babel-17)

"The Citadel of Troizen, where the Palace stands, was built by giants before anyone remembers."
(Mary Renault, The King Must Die)

"In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beauitiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster."
(Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe)

(Interesting geographical theme taking shape here.)

"On a certain day in June, 19--, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited."
(John Crowley, Little, Big)

"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time before him nor I aint looking to see none agen."
(Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker)

"Cap down to his black brows, Warren leaned on his truck, hearing out two men slouched in a junker car -- the kind of car whose men leave it in a ditch after they've done their business."
(Rebecca Ore, Becoming Alien)

"Alive!
"Still alive.
"Alive ... again.
"Awakening was hard, as always."
(Octavia Butler, Dawn)

"Marley was dead, to begin with."
(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversation in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?' "
(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

"It was predictable, in hindsight."
(Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow)

Comments

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Someone else who's read Becoming Alien!

That's one of my favorite books, and one of the most underrated and underread SF novels I know of.

I love that book.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yay! I agree -- I don't know anyone else who has read it, and bits of it come into my mind so often. (The bathrooms at the academy! with the dozens of different setups because it's so difficult for people to pee without the proper stimuli!)