We read...

To know we are not alone. ~C.S. Lewis~

Friday, November 6, 2009

10 best(?) firsts

Friday Firsts* Copy/paste the question and button.
* leave a comment and link to your post.
* Join in with the intermittent puzzle, (look for the answer the following FF). First correct answer = 1 pt.    A prize will go out on FF 1st anniversary ! (track your progress on my sidebar)…
First things first we had five points up for grabs last month and Becca got them all! straight to the top for you girl…

  • What book famously begins with what the narrator is not going to do...bang on with ‘all that David Copperfield kind of crap.’ The Catcher in the Rye
  • What is the iconic narrator’s name? Holden Caulfield
  • Who wrote it? J. D. Salinger
  • Who wrote the book referred to in the opening sentence? Charles Dickens
  • Which American punk band has a song about the book? Green Day

November’s Friday First is for my list loving friends. Below is a list of 10 Famous first lines that I copied from 100 best first lines from novels. How many have you read and how many make it onto Mt TBR on the strength of the first line alone?

1. Call me Ishmael. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
3. A screaming comes across the sky. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.  Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
7. Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicious of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.  James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. George Orwell, 1984
9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
10. I am an invisible man. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

I’ve read four (1,2,8 and 9),  have  4, 5 & 6 already on Mt TBR and I think I’ll add 3 on the strength of this first line.

Puzzle: for three points: Where was Mary Lennox sent to live and what did everyone say about her looks? From which book does this fabulous first come?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

She was sent to live with her uncle in England in the book The Secret Garden. I forget what they said about her looks, although I think she was really thin.

Nise' said...

One of my favorite childhood books - The Secret Garden. She is sent to Misselthwaite Manor in England, the most disagreeable looking child ever seen.

I've read #2 and 8. Started, but never finished, 1 and 9. Lolita's first line has me intrigued.