Ten first lines meme.

[rivka]

Courtesy of papersky, hobbitbabe, and pameladean, first lines of ten beloved novels not yet mentioned by anyone else. I have also limited myself to one novel per author. In no particular order:

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood.

It was a dark and stormy night. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle.

Ethan said, "I hate baseball." Summerland, Michael Chabon.

I am afraid. Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.

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

Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares. A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett.

"That's another of them, don't you know," said the Major. As some people can sense the presence of a cat in the room, so the Major could sense a journalist, or at any rate claimed that he could. The Glimpses of the Moon, Edmund Crispin.

The last two books on my list are missing from my bookshelf. If I lent them to you, please consider returning them. papersky kindly provided the first lines:

There was a new house next door to Gentian's. Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, Pamela Dean.

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

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Your wish is my command:

Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary "There was a new house next door to Gentian's."

The Game of Kings "Lymond is back."

Great collection, I've read all of them except Summerland. What's it like?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Great collection, I've read all of them except Summerland. What's it like?

I actually left a comment about it in an old journal entry of yours, the one where you talk about the rarity of North American fantasy that really feels as though it belongs here, as opposed to being a transplant from the Old World. That comment is here (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=papersky&itemid=5854&thread=137182#t137182).

I'm not sure you'd like it, but I thought it was great.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, baseball.

I told you about Rysmiel and the Stephen Jay Gould book that uses baseball as an analogy for evolution?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, baseball.

Well, yes, I'm afraid so.

It really does work thematically, in a way that (for example) basketball or football would not. In that sense, it's not a gratuituous injection of sports into a fantasy setting. But I don't imagine that would be much comfort to you, would it?

The hero hates baseball and is the worst Little League player in the history of his town, and yet over the course of the novel he comes to appreciate its poetry and mythic resonance. Chabon says he did that in part because he wanted people who weren't baseball-mad to be able to enter into the story. I don't know how well it works, though.

I told you about Rysmiel and the Stephen Jay Gould book that uses baseball as an analogy for evolution?

Goodness. I'm not sure that you did, but I'd enjoy hearing about it.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, Rysmiel already understood evolution, and so was able to use this knowledge to figure out the baseball stuff, and thinks he may now know how it works.