First lines of 10 favorite novels

[rosaw]

This really fascinated me, I have loved reading all the people contributing to this meme. I have that 100 things about me list that I've been working on for about 3 weeks. I'm on number 18. Which is kinda pathetic. Especially since tzikeh has two lists of 100. Her energy and spirit amaze me, I wish I could borrow some. I loved reading people's 100 things but when faced with the blank word doc, just couldn't think of anything to put on that dreaded list. Pathetic, eh?

This, however, is a different story (ha ha -- I'm a dork). This was really fun. I had to look all over my apartment for well-worn, well-loved novels and, while I'm a little dusty and digusted with the state of my bookshelves, I have a list.

10. There were five of us -- Carruthers and the new recruit and myself, and Mr. Spivens and the verger. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

9. Certain people in Ilmorog, our Ilmorog, told me that this story was too disgraceful, too shameful, that it should be concealed in the depths of everlasting darkness. Devil on the Cross by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (sometimes also James Ngugi)

8. This is the story of a real woman. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi

7. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

6. I am a botanist. In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker

5. It was a nice day. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

4. On the first Monday of April 1625, the market town of Meung, the birthplace of the author of Roman de la Rose, was in a wild state of excitement. The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas

3. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

2. There was a wall. The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

1. I was fifteen years old when I first met Sherlock Holmes, fifteen years old with my nose in a book as I walked the Sussex Downs, and nearly stepped on him. The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie King

This was really fun, I can't wait to read more people's lists tomorrow.

PS Killa, if you're out there, you really made my day today. Thank you!

Comments

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Especially since tzikeh has two lists of 100. Her energy and spirit amaze me, I wish I could borrow some.

Heh - rather than energy and spirit, one could say ego and time on my hands. But, be that as it may:

::bottles up a bunch of energy and spirit and sends to you post-haste, with hugs::

Wish I could, actually.

And re: ten lines - I almost included Good Omens and To Say Nothin of the Dog. There are so *many* I almost included. It's an impossible meme, in the end.

I look forward to reading your 100 things, no matter when you post them.

Let me count the novels

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

This reminds me that if I don't read more Connie Willis, I'm going to hell, and not the cute one with the pitchforks, but the hell-on-earth where one's brain eats itself for lack of decent intellectual sustenance.

For the rest of it, I don't think I could decide on ten novels. It's either about two that I can remember at any given time. The list might be something like:

First line of the Lymond Chronicles, whatever it is. Something about an excruciatingly picturesque description of some watercourse in Scotland (which is all of Scotland except for the mountains) resounding with the rumor that "Lymond of Crawford is coming back." Which leads to all kinds of things, most of them more interesting when Crawford is on stage doing them.

For form's sake, the first line of Lord of the Rings, whatever it is, probably something about hobbits. It's not "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit..." because that's the first line of The Hobbit, a very different book with smaller scope and a tendency to go all twee for the children, even though it has a terrific dragon with real novelistic rigor. It is more of a novel than LotR, which is an Epic, which is different. Epics are inextricably bound up with poetry, real or implied, and LotR has an awful lot between the lines and sometimes in the text. Even the movie did it, resulting in the best thing I've seen approximating and aria that wasn't an aria on stage, and that includes some arias sung in other movies.

I can't say "Whanne in Aprille," not honestly, since Middle English is the best way I know of to make my eyelids slide shut and stay that way. Come to think of it, I need some Chaucer on my bedside table right now, since all that Francis Dick is just keeping me awake.

The Dispossessed is good, no doubt of it, but I'd forgotten the part about the wall until I re-read the line. I don't seem to be a first-line rememberer.

I can remember the overture or opening scene of at least ten operas. Does that count?

Horn-call of Der Rosenkavalier
Busy scurrying of Marriage of Figaro
Columnar chords of Magic Flute
"Notte e giorno" of Don Giovanni
E-flat bassline of Das Rheingold
The lonely sea-call of Flying Dutchman
The mutter over Monterone of Rigoletto that sets up the vengeance plot that nobody pays attention to anyway
The waltzes of Die Fledermaus
The three Leonore overtures for Fidelio
The Muse and (not coincidentally) the Drinking Chorus of Tales of Hoffmann

Confused and synesthetic
Stranger