Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Weekly Geeks #21: First Lines


For Weekly Geeks this week, Dewey has given us a huge list of 100 first lines and we are to post the ones we know. After that, we are supposed to go around other blogs and learn some of the ones we don't know.

I didn't know very many of them, but here are the ones I DID know:

1. Call me Ishmael. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

12. You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

16. 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. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. Don Quioxte by Cervantes

37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

56. I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho’ not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call’d me. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
Click on the link above and see how many YOU can come up with!

2 comments:

  1. Here's my list...I knew about half of them.
    http://www.apooobooks.com/weekly-geeks-21-apooo-edition/

    ReplyDelete
  2. You knew quite a lot, actually! Way to go!

    ReplyDelete

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