100 First Lines
Mar. 15th, 2006 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shakatanyI was reading Locus, the SF magazine, last night and I came across this link to what the American Book Review considers are the 100 Best First Lines with
#8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
#15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)
#47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. —C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
#72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. —Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)
#82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)
#83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." —Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)
See if your favorite author made the list.
ETA: It appears that my lj layout changed all of a sudden without any doing on my part. I wonder if it's permanent or just a glitch in the system *ponders the mystery that is lj*
#8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
#15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)
#47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. —C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
#72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. —Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)
#82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)
#83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." —Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)
See if your favorite author made the list.
ETA: It appears that my lj layout changed all of a sudden without any doing on my part. I wonder if it's permanent or just a glitch in the system *ponders the mystery that is lj*
