Oh, all right -- first lines from ten favorite books

[pameladean]

Most of this "meme" stuff just makes me say, "Huh?" But I must admit this one is getting to me. So here. These are favorites, old favorites, hoary favorites, books read and read and read and read. I could do ten more, or thirty more. It would be different tomorrow or in an hour.

"Not many people remember Lamprias now in Athens." Mary Renault, THE MASK OF APOLLO

"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." Patrick O'Brian, MASTER AND COMMANDER

"'Kate,' Reed Amhearst said, disentangling his long legs from the small car, 'What on earth are you doing here?" Amanda Cross, THE JAMES JOYCE MURDERS

"Harriet was trying to explain to Sport how to play Town." Louise Fitzhugh, HARRIET THE SPY

"Staring at the blank ceiling above him, Roche knew exactly how poor bloody Adam had felt in the garden, stark naked and scared out of his wits." Anthony Price, SOLDIER NO MORE

"There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood." Dorothy L. Sayers, STRONG POISON

"You see, I had this space suit." Robert A. Heinlein, HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL

"Who's there?" William Shakespeare, THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

"Alice was getting 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 neither pictures nor conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'" Lewis Carroll, ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

"On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays it was Court Hand and Summulae Logicales, while the rest of the week it was the Organon, Repetition, and Astrology." T.H. White, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING

Oh, ten is not not enough, not enough, I have a whole fluttering whispering horde saying, but you read me over and over, but you love this, but isn't that just as important? Yes.

Pamela

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I often wonder what Harriet the spy is doing now.

I have read all those except the Amanda Cross, and I love all of them except the T.H. White. All versions of the Arthur story read to me like jigsaws where the author has got what's obviously a bit of pond and mistaken it for a bit of sky, and another very important piece is upside down. It isn't obedience to some ur-version, because I feel just the same about Malory, and the French lais, and even poor silly Geoffrey. Indeed, the only Arthurian story I can say I definitely like is Jane Yolen's short "Evian Steel". I can't think why people don't change the names and set them in other worlds...

[pameladean]

I am haplessly fond of Amanda Cross. THE JAMES JOYCE MURDERS is comparatively minor Cross, but it contains a completely hilarious, roll-on-the-floor-laughing scene in which four professors of English, spanning at least three generations, most of them female, attempt to explain the meaning of James Joyce to a rural policeman.

Cross's novels get less and less "thingy" as time goes on; sets and landscapes and background disappear and conversation looms ever larger. I remain haplessly fond of them.

I am very wary of Arthurian retellings in general, but White got to me before Malory did and I remain haplessly fond of his work also, despite his dreadful attitude towards women.

My favorite take on the whole Arthurian thing is Mary Stewart's. If I'd had another ten books to quote the opening lines of, some Stewart would be in there, although probably it would be THE IVY TREE or MY BROTHER MICHAEL.

Pamela

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I like The Crystal Cave as a thing on its own, about a possible Merlin, but when it gets on to the actual Arthurian stuff in the later books it follows Geoffrey into confusion.

The first line of The Ivy Tree is something like "I might have been alone in a painted landscape, Eve, dreaming of her Adam." Clever book. As well as the Greek ones, I also like Touch Not the Cat.

[vass]

"There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood." Dorothy L. Sayers, STRONG POISON

Which is a beautiful line not just on its own merits but because of its chrysanthemum parallel later on in the book. Since first finishing the book, I can't think of one line without the other.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I am so fond of the Kate Fansler books I buy them in hard cover as soon as I see them. (You do know that Cross is a pseudonym for Carolyn Heilbrun, right?) I'd have to have something from one of Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series. It'd be hard to pick a favorite book, but that's definitely my favorite series. Oh, and Sayers, yes. Though I'd probably pick Gaudy Night reather than Strong Poison.

MKK