Saturday, July 16, 2011

Challenge: Opening Line




I found this challenge idea at Books For Walls, which, to be honest, is a web page that I'm not quite sure I completely understand yet. It appears to be a site that loves and supports books and libraries, but I need to read more of it to be more familiar.

Nevertheless, as I also love books and libraries, I decided to use this challenge which I found at Books for Walls.

Presenting the What's Your Opening Line Challenge --

Just tell me some cool opening lines of books you have read.. maybe you memorized one.. or maybe you have a favorite book and want to look at its opening line and share it with me here. You may know, for example, which book this opening line comes from:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Do you know?? (If you said A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, you are correct! Ding ding ding!)

I'll post a few here for fun and will include a few for which you can guess the book titles.

I just started a new book, which you may not have heard of yet; here is its opening line:

Everyone has secrets -- shameful episodes in our past that we try to keep buried.

The book title is Inheriting the Trade: a Northern Family Confronts its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History by Thomas Norman DeWolf.

Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.The book? Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund.

Here are some you can guess. Warning: there is a mixture of easy and hard. (Please tell me both the book title and its author.)
1. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

2. Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill.

3. There is a watch lying on the green carpet of the living room of my childhood.

4. I sat in the lobby of the Pierre airport, waiting.

5. Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.

6. I first heard of Antonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America.

7. The earliest streaks of light were barely breaking the eastern sky as we turned east in Strasburg, Pennsylvania.

8. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey.

What do you think? Do you know some of them? Give it a try! (and don't Google them before trying, unless you want to spoil all the fun!)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fun challenge! Thank for the link, too. I'm going to check it out.

Twisted Quilts said...

What fun! I know several of them. Thanks for the challenge.

Mama Drama Times Two said...

I loved Ahab's Wife - one of the few books I've read again. And don't you just love Mme Romatswe series? My boys enjoyed them aloud ontape for long car rides. Alexander Mc Call Smith has a new series I picked up the book from the library the other day: Corduroy Mansions. Still plugging away at my A to Z Challenge.