This is the grossest self-indulgence
Jan. 28th, 2003 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanHowever, while waiting for Elise to come over for tea, I must, I must, I must post ten more first lines. I think I can stop then. I hope so.
"The mowing machine's whirring sounded cheerfully from the old buffalo wallow south of the claim shanty, where bluestem grass stood tall and thick and Pa was cutting it for hay." Laura Ingalls Wilder, THE LONG WINTER
"The room was dark." Emma Bull, BONE DANCE
(This is not how the book starts in my head. In my head, it starts "I came up on my back in the dirt." Thus the perils of reading works in progress.)
"Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt." Jane Austen, PERSUASION
"One night after dinner when David was reading *Doctor Doolittle in the Moon* and his father was reading the newspaper, and his mother was darning socks, his father suddenly exclaimed: 'Well, now, *that's* very odd!' " Eleanor Cameron, THE WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET
"The whale, the traitor; the note she left me and the run-in with the Post police; and how I felt about her and what she turned out to be -- all this you know." Raphael Carter, THE FORTUNATE FALL
"I divide the books Nero Wolfe reads into four grades: A, B, C, and D." Rex Stout, PLOT IT YOURSELF
"The elderly passenger sitting on the north-window side of that inexorably moving railway coach, next to an empty seat and facing two empty ones, was none other than Professor Timofey Pnin." Vladimir Nabokov, PNIN
"Rosemary Brown picked a stick of rhubarb from the end of the garden, and taking care not to spill the sugar in the saucer she was carrying, bent herself double and crept between the currant bushes." Barbara Sleigh, THE KINGDOM OF CARBONEL
"She stayed long enough at the front door to listen to their footfalls die away along the graveled drive, as if she wanted to taste to the last morsel her furious disappointment and humiliation." Eleanor Cameron, A ROOM MADE OF WINDOWS
" 'Nothing ever happens to me.' " Mary Stewart, MY BROTHER MICHAEL
This is terrible, I apologize, I won't do it again, honest.
Pamela
"The mowing machine's whirring sounded cheerfully from the old buffalo wallow south of the claim shanty, where bluestem grass stood tall and thick and Pa was cutting it for hay." Laura Ingalls Wilder, THE LONG WINTER
"The room was dark." Emma Bull, BONE DANCE
(This is not how the book starts in my head. In my head, it starts "I came up on my back in the dirt." Thus the perils of reading works in progress.)
"Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt." Jane Austen, PERSUASION
"One night after dinner when David was reading *Doctor Doolittle in the Moon* and his father was reading the newspaper, and his mother was darning socks, his father suddenly exclaimed: 'Well, now, *that's* very odd!' " Eleanor Cameron, THE WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET
"The whale, the traitor; the note she left me and the run-in with the Post police; and how I felt about her and what she turned out to be -- all this you know." Raphael Carter, THE FORTUNATE FALL
"I divide the books Nero Wolfe reads into four grades: A, B, C, and D." Rex Stout, PLOT IT YOURSELF
"The elderly passenger sitting on the north-window side of that inexorably moving railway coach, next to an empty seat and facing two empty ones, was none other than Professor Timofey Pnin." Vladimir Nabokov, PNIN
"Rosemary Brown picked a stick of rhubarb from the end of the garden, and taking care not to spill the sugar in the saucer she was carrying, bent herself double and crept between the currant bushes." Barbara Sleigh, THE KINGDOM OF CARBONEL
"She stayed long enough at the front door to listen to their footfalls die away along the graveled drive, as if she wanted to taste to the last morsel her furious disappointment and humiliation." Eleanor Cameron, A ROOM MADE OF WINDOWS
" 'Nothing ever happens to me.' " Mary Stewart, MY BROTHER MICHAEL
This is terrible, I apologize, I won't do it again, honest.
Pamela
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 12:31 pm (UTC)I haven't done the first lines thing because that doesn't seem to be how my mind works (and because deciding what's a favorite is always problematic). I'm tempted to start posting "memorable lines of fiction", not at all the same thing, some are last lines, some are from the middles, some might be firsts...and avoiding what other people have used makes the game progressively harder.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 03:31 pm (UTC)I don't remember first lines reliably, except for that of POSSESSION, which Papersky got to, and of A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE, which, oh no, I feel another ten forming in my head, aieeee.
I just thought about books I had read and read and read, that were part of the permanent furniture of my mind. And there are far more than ten or twenty of those. I might peter out after a hundred.
I like the idea of a post about memorable lines, though. Even more in that I don't categorize stuff like that.
Pamela
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Date: 2003-01-28 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 02:18 pm (UTC)on the contrary, this is delightful. it's reminding me of old friends and giving me ideas for additional books to read.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 02:54 pm (UTC)I didn't know the Mushroom Planet author wrote other books as well as that series.
Eleanor Cameron
Date: 2003-01-28 03:26 pm (UTC)Pamela
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Date: 2003-01-28 07:18 pm (UTC)MKK
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Date: 2003-01-30 09:51 am (UTC)I still love Archie, which is not to say that I would care to live with him.
I did watch a handful of some Nero Wolfe TV version or other -- the name Maury Chapin comes to mind as Wolfe. I thought it was amazingly well done overall but contained very serious stupidities for individual novel adaptations. I thought Archie was cast wonderfully. And there's a scene from one book the name of which I can never remember; it's the one about all the unwed mothers. The dancing scene near the beginning where the murder or suicide happens was just inspired; it not only captured the events of the book, it put them to music.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-01-30 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-30 07:32 pm (UTC)Pamela