Callenge!
Okay, so below (in the cut mind ye) are 36 lines from 36 books. These are books I have enjoyed in some way shape or form and they are all the first line - skipping introductions, even if vital to the plot. There are poems, there are plays, there are novels, there are collections of short stories and of essays. Some authors are repeated. There is at least one graphic novel. Some from plays begin with stage direction, others with the first line of dialogue. Do not question my judgment.
For those of you wondering why what you'd expect to be on "Q's Greatest" isn't on here, I do not have all of my books in one location. So let's call this round the Best of New Pennsylware
Hints.
5, 7, 10, 16, & 32 I think are too easy for their own good.
A Scorcese fan could pick up on 9... pay attention to it even if you haven't read it the answer is there.
I don't expect many people to know 26, but I expect those who do to want to kill me. I also don't expect anyone to get 4, 8, 13, 25, or 29. But I hope someone does.
36 comes from a compilation, 36B comes from my favorite part.
1. Fame requires every kind of excess.
2. No curtain.
3. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
4. What did you ask, Andy Bissette?
5. Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
6. There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.
7. It was a pleasure to burn.
8. To Leda, daughter of Thestius, three girls were born: Phoebe; Clytemnestra, my wife; and Helen.
9. When that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendered is the flour;
When Zephirius eeke with his sweete breeth
Inspired hat in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for toseken strunge strondes,
To ferne, halwes, kowthe in sundry londes,
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly bilsful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen when that they were seeke.
10. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
11. Later than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof.
12. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
13. Odett, of course, had spent her weekly nickel, and wanted Ada to share hers when they passed El Dulcero, the candy man, on their way home.
14. No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences far greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own: that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transiet creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
15. For the first fifteen years of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other’s existence.
16. “Who is John Galt?”
17. In and around the Hilsboro Courthouse.
18. Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.
19. On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemoor or Blackmoor.
20. A squat grey building of only thrity-four stories.
21. Two ELIZABETHANS passing the time in a place without any visual character.
22. This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.
23. It is a sin to write this.
24. Of bodies changed to other forms I tell;
You Gods, who have yourselves wrought every change,
Inspire my enterprise and lead my lay
In one continuous song from nature’s first
Remote beginnings to our modern times.
25. “There’s a girl who wants to see you,” Sam Spade’s secretary, Effie, tells him at the beginning of both the novel and the movie of The Maltese Falcon.
26. There’s a dream in which huge faceless women with wolves astride them are chewing at my entrails and legs.
27. Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enfrost a far more vnfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
Ands ing of Kinghts and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose praises hauing slept in silence long,
Me all to meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song.
28. Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston.
29. Far out at sea, the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflowers, and as clear as the purest crystal.
30. My brother's first serious girlfiend was eight years older--twenty-eight to his twenty.
31. Someone was standing by his bed, a person completely unlike anyone Tendai had ever met.
32. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
33. "I thought you said you read The Book," said Sam.
34. En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo pobre.
35. Here is James Henry Trotter when he was about four years old.
36. It's so dark that for awhile - just how long I don't know - I think I'm still unconscious.
36 B. I've got a good job now, and no reason to feel glum.
So comment and tell me what you think which is. Title and if possible, author.
For those of you wondering why what you'd expect to be on "Q's Greatest" isn't on here, I do not have all of my books in one location. So let's call this round the Best of New Pennsylware
Hints.
5, 7, 10, 16, & 32 I think are too easy for their own good.
A Scorcese fan could pick up on 9... pay attention to it even if you haven't read it the answer is there.
I don't expect many people to know 26, but I expect those who do to want to kill me. I also don't expect anyone to get 4, 8, 13, 25, or 29. But I hope someone does.
36 comes from a compilation, 36B comes from my favorite part.
1. Fame requires every kind of excess.
2. No curtain.
3. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
4. What did you ask, Andy Bissette?
5. Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
6. There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.
7. It was a pleasure to burn.
8. To Leda, daughter of Thestius, three girls were born: Phoebe; Clytemnestra, my wife; and Helen.
9. When that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendered is the flour;
When Zephirius eeke with his sweete breeth
Inspired hat in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for toseken strunge strondes,
To ferne, halwes, kowthe in sundry londes,
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly bilsful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen when that they were seeke.
10. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
11. Later than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof.
12. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
13. Odett, of course, had spent her weekly nickel, and wanted Ada to share hers when they passed El Dulcero, the candy man, on their way home.
14. No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences far greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own: that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transiet creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
15. For the first fifteen years of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other’s existence.
16. “Who is John Galt?”
17. In and around the Hilsboro Courthouse.
18. Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.
19. On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemoor or Blackmoor.
20. A squat grey building of only thrity-four stories.
21. Two ELIZABETHANS passing the time in a place without any visual character.
22. This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.
23. It is a sin to write this.
24. Of bodies changed to other forms I tell;
You Gods, who have yourselves wrought every change,
Inspire my enterprise and lead my lay
In one continuous song from nature’s first
Remote beginnings to our modern times.
25. “There’s a girl who wants to see you,” Sam Spade’s secretary, Effie, tells him at the beginning of both the novel and the movie of The Maltese Falcon.
26. There’s a dream in which huge faceless women with wolves astride them are chewing at my entrails and legs.
27. Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enfrost a far more vnfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
Ands ing of Kinghts and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose praises hauing slept in silence long,
Me all to meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song.
28. Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston.
29. Far out at sea, the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflowers, and as clear as the purest crystal.
30. My brother's first serious girlfiend was eight years older--twenty-eight to his twenty.
31. Someone was standing by his bed, a person completely unlike anyone Tendai had ever met.
32. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
33. "I thought you said you read The Book," said Sam.
34. En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo pobre.
35. Here is James Henry Trotter when he was about four years old.
36. It's so dark that for awhile - just how long I don't know - I think I'm still unconscious.
36 B. I've got a good job now, and no reason to feel glum.
So comment and tell me what you think which is. Title and if possible, author.