First line guessing game
Here are the opening sentences of thirty books for you to guess. I took out all the character names but left in any other proper nouns.
1. ---, captain of the Nile boat Silver Beetle, paused for the fiftieth time beside his vessel's high beaked prow and shaded his eyes to peer anxiously across the wharfs.
2. Pa said we were too young to go to the hanging.
3. I have come early this afternoon to sit, before anyone else arrives, in the quiet of Salem Meetinghouse.
4. I remember the day the Aleut ship came to our island.
5. On a blustery autumn day a galley was nosing up the wide loop of a British river that widened into the harbour of Rutupiae.
6. First the colors.
7. I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family.
8. It was dusk-winter dusk.
9. I was raised in a gaunt house with a garden; my earliest recollections are of floating lights in the apple-trees.
10. I feel rather a fool writing down my thoughts, but this evening, Sister --- made the very firm suggestion that I start keeping a diary - and handed me a brand-new tablet from the supply closet for that very purpose.
11. Miss --- has the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master.
12. The bear had been their undoing, though at the time they had all laughed.
13. On a morning in mid-April, 1687, the brigantine Dolphin left the open sea, sailed briskly across the Sound to the wide mouth of the Connecticut River and into Saybrook harbor.
14. The dim wagon track went no farther on the prairie, and Pa stopped the Horses.
15. Just before dawn - that moment when time itself seems to stand still, when the whole world teeters on the edge of possibilities - a man looking like death's own shadow came scurrying down a bluff toward the tiny village of Kilonny in Ireland.
16. My brother ---tells me that I was the first ever girl born in Nasel, that I was A Miracle.
17. In 1864 --- was eleven, and as wild a little tomboy as ever ran the woods of western Wisconsin.
18. Dearest ---, It is dreadfully flat here since you have been gone, and it only makes it worse to imagine all the things I shall be missing.
19. "Did Mama sing every day?" asked ---.
20. The Austrian horses glinted in the moonlight, their riders standing tall in the saddle, swords raised.
21. --- ran into the cobbled street, carefully dodging between two polished and shining hansom cabs.
22. When summer comes to the North Woods, time slows down.
23. "---!" The voice broke through the summer afternoon like a crack.
24. "Oof! I've been stabbed!"
25. I woke to the sound of a mosquito whining in my left ear and my mother screeching in the right.
26. My name is --- and in London I was born, but, no, I wasn't born with that name.
27. I write for many reasons.
28. When I turned back to the house, my father called after me and asked me did I figure that I was finished.
29. He sat on the floor before the hearth with his knees against his chin, the flames at his back, and warily watched his father's face.
30. On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of --- and ---, Shipping Agents in the financial heart of London, and a young girl got out and paid the driver.
1. ---, captain of the Nile boat Silver Beetle, paused for the fiftieth time beside his vessel's high beaked prow and shaded his eyes to peer anxiously across the wharfs.
2. Pa said we were too young to go to the hanging.
3. I have come early this afternoon to sit, before anyone else arrives, in the quiet of Salem Meetinghouse.
4. I remember the day the Aleut ship came to our island.
5. On a blustery autumn day a galley was nosing up the wide loop of a British river that widened into the harbour of Rutupiae.
6. First the colors.
7. I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family.
8. It was dusk-winter dusk.
9. I was raised in a gaunt house with a garden; my earliest recollections are of floating lights in the apple-trees.
10. I feel rather a fool writing down my thoughts, but this evening, Sister --- made the very firm suggestion that I start keeping a diary - and handed me a brand-new tablet from the supply closet for that very purpose.
11. Miss --- has the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master.
12. The bear had been their undoing, though at the time they had all laughed.
13. On a morning in mid-April, 1687, the brigantine Dolphin left the open sea, sailed briskly across the Sound to the wide mouth of the Connecticut River and into Saybrook harbor.
14. The dim wagon track went no farther on the prairie, and Pa stopped the Horses.
15. Just before dawn - that moment when time itself seems to stand still, when the whole world teeters on the edge of possibilities - a man looking like death's own shadow came scurrying down a bluff toward the tiny village of Kilonny in Ireland.
16. My brother ---tells me that I was the first ever girl born in Nasel, that I was A Miracle.
17. In 1864 --- was eleven, and as wild a little tomboy as ever ran the woods of western Wisconsin.
18. Dearest ---, It is dreadfully flat here since you have been gone, and it only makes it worse to imagine all the things I shall be missing.
19. "Did Mama sing every day?" asked ---.
20. The Austrian horses glinted in the moonlight, their riders standing tall in the saddle, swords raised.
21. --- ran into the cobbled street, carefully dodging between two polished and shining hansom cabs.
22. When summer comes to the North Woods, time slows down.
23. "---!" The voice broke through the summer afternoon like a crack.
24. "Oof! I've been stabbed!"
25. I woke to the sound of a mosquito whining in my left ear and my mother screeching in the right.
26. My name is --- and in London I was born, but, no, I wasn't born with that name.
27. I write for many reasons.
28. When I turned back to the house, my father called after me and asked me did I figure that I was finished.
29. He sat on the floor before the hearth with his knees against his chin, the flames at his back, and warily watched his father's face.
30. On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of --- and ---, Shipping Agents in the financial heart of London, and a young girl got out and paid the driver.