First lines of books meme

[zwol]

I got it from madmanatw, who got it from someone unfamiliar to me.

The rules:

1. Choose five to ten of your all time favorite books.
2. Take the first sentence of the first chapter and make a list in your journal.
3. Don't reveal the author or the title of the book.
4. Now everyone try and guess! Cross them off as they're guessed correctly.

And, like madmanatw, I'm leaving things out that are just too easy or that have already been done, except where they were too good to leave out. In some cases I have also truncated very long sentences at a clause break, or chosen the first sentence from chapter 1 instead of the first sentence of the prologue, or vice versa.

1. I wonder how you will greet these words; indeed, I wonder how you will receive into your hands the paper that bears them, as I think you cannot be in expectation of correspondence from me.
2. What it is to be old is to remember things that nobody else alive can remember.
3. So that ignorant, thick-lipped, evil whorehopping editor phones me up and says, "Does the word contract mean anything to you, Jerusalem?"
4. The Berlitz-Kikoyan skull tap gives me idiomatic Tokyo-Bay argot, but the pilgrim's prayer, as ancient as the pilgrimage is long, defies easy translation.
5. Here's how January 21, 2000 panned out for three different elements of the natural order.
6. Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.
7. I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.
8. From between two trees at the crest of a hill a very old man watched, with a nostalgic longing he thought he'd lost the capacity for, as the last group of picnickers packed up their baskets, mounted their horses, and rode away south.
9. My parents couldn't understand why I wanted to spend the summer working for my grandfather.
10. It was little more than three miles from the Wall into the Old Kingdom, but that was enough.

[Edited to remove spurious "four" from #7.]

Comments

[madmanatw.livejournal.com]

3 I know, since I was going to use it myself but couldn't find the exact quote. 2 rings a bell but I can't place it, and so does 9.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I'll be very surprised if anyone gets #9 right.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

I've got 6, 10 I've got to within a couple of choices (both of which, of course, I read thanks to you), and I believe 7 doesn't actually contain the word "four."

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Indeed it does not. Lemme just edit that out...