Ten Books I Love Meme
Gakked from lenoregray to put off doing what I should actually be doing.
Ten Books I Love Meme
1. Pick 10 of your favorite books.
2. Post the first sentence of each book. (If one sentence seems too short, post two or three!)
The Judas Child (Carol O'Connell)
She slowed the purple bicycle and turned around to look directly at him with the full force of big brown eyes and a wicked grin.
In the Company of Heroes (Michael J. Durant)
I woke up in the silence of my own grave. At least, that's what I believed in that first moment, because in my last flash of consciousness, I had clearly seen the clawing hand of the Grim Reaper. I did not know where I was. I did not know who I was.
The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath.
Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills (David Milch)
Herbert Selby said that there were two fundamental motivations, fear and faith. I believe that. I believe that a storyteller acts in faith by rendering every aspect of human behavior and experience without distortion or convention, allowing character and event to be absolutely true to themselves. In that sense, I suppose I mean the faithful artist disappears into his work.
Cold Fire (Dean Koontz)
Even before the events in the supermarket, Jim Ironheart should have known trouble was coming. During the night, he dreamed of being pursued by a flock of large blackbirds that shrieked around him in a turbulent flapping of wings and tore at him with hooked beaks as precision honed as surgical scalpels.
Life is Good! Lessons in Joyful Living (Trixie Koontz, dog)
I, Trixie Koontz (who is dog) am happy twenty-four hours, fifty-eight minutes, and thirty seconds every day. Am unhappy only for thirty seconds after breakfast, after lunch, and after dinner because food gone, leaving empty dish. Empty dish looks as deep as eternity. Eternity reminds me no one lives forever. Remembering no one lives forever, I am sad. So sad. Tail won't wag. Try again. Won't wag. Try again. Nada. Have desire to read French novels about futility of life. Then remember next meal--or snack--comes in four hours. Tail wags. Wags all by itself. Day grows brighter. Realize dish must be empty before it can be filled again. Empty dish is promise of full dish to come. Life is good. Time to pee.
The Ice Queen (Alice Hoffman)
Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving thing. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.
Kilkenny (Louis L'Amour)
To Clifton House on the Canadian came a lone rider on a long-legged buckskin. He was a green-eyed man wearing a flat-crowned, flat-brimmed black hat, black shirt and chaps. The Barlow & Sanderson Stage had just pulled in when the rider came out of the lava country, skirting the foothills on the Sangre de Cristos. He was riding easy when they first saw him but his horse was dust-coated and the sweat had dried on him. The man had a tear in his shirt sleeve and a bloody bandage on his side. He rode directly to the stable and dismounted, caring first for his horse.
A Bad Beginning: A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket)
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
Nevermore (Harold Schechter)
During the whole of a dull, dark and dreary day, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the sky, I had been sitting alone in my chamber, poring over a medical treatise of singular interest and merit.
And One to Grow On ...
Scrub Dog of Alaska (Walt Morey)
The whole mining community of Aurora names the pup. At first, when they were annoyed by something he'd done, they said, "That no-good scrub of Smiley Jackson's." But that was too long. They shortened it to "That scrub!" which was the lowest form of no good. And Jackson agreed with them.