the 10 Books Meme... :)
Got this from several of you on LJ:
1. Pick 10 of your favorite books or series.
2. Post the first sentence of each book. (If one sentence seems too short, post two or three!)
3. Let everyone try to guess the titles and authors of your books.
It's always hard to choose favorite books for me. There are a few that will probably always make the top ten list, but my list changes from year to year, depending on what new books I've read. (Not to mention that I keep wanting to include fanfic in the list!)
So here, in order I was able to find them and pick them off the shelf, are ten of my current favorite books (two oops, three of them are parts of series). I'll be interested to see if and what anyone recognizes.
1. When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy.
2. ___ ___ was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
3. Once there were four children whose names were ___, ___, ___, and ___. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air raids.
4. There are some men who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever.
5. The first sunny day of spring evaporated the dampness that had accumulated in the soil during the winter months, and warmed the fragile bones of the old people who now could stroll the gentle orthopedic paths of the gardens.
(originally)
El primer día de sol evaporó la humedad acumulada en la tierra por los meses de invierno y calentó los frágiles huesos de los ancianos, que pudieron pasear por los senderos ortopédicos del jardín.
6. I am what they call in our village, "one who has not yet died" - a widow, eighty years old.
7. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother ___ got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
8. It was nearly midnight, and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind.
9. Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened. First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees.
10. Claire: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.
Here are some hints: (highlight the text if you want to read the hints)
2, 3, 7 and 8 are hugely bestselling books - and most of my flist SHOULD recognize 8 at least! :)
5 is obviously a translation from Spanish, and could be called a classic of modern Latin American lit.
All of these were guessed already. :)
1 and 9 were chosen for Oprah's book club.
4 is the first a wildly best-selling series of books that are, for lack of a better description, beach reads, like eating candy, not exactly romance novels, but close (although the writer did do romance under a different nom de plume).
6 I fear no one will know. It was displayed prominently at Borders and Barnes & Noble when it came out a few years ago. It has a 'readers circle' stamp on it - I think it was popular in book clubs.
10 was another popular book club selection. It also came out this year as a movie - I haven't seen it yet, and am just a tiny bit leery of watching it, as I don't want to see one of my favorite books ruined on screen!