While She Knits -- Favorite Books Meme

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I've enjoyed reading various people's Favorite Books Meme---can we play it while she knits?

Here's what you do.  Grab one of your favorite books and post the first sentence.  Other people try to guess the book.  Make it as easy or hard as you want.  Remove character's names if you want to.  If no one's guessed it in a week or so, we can all come back here and reveal our books.


So, I might say:

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.

And then YOU would say...well, what DO you say?  What book is it from?    C'mon, it's an easy one!

Comments

[zumie-ashlen.livejournal.com]

Darn you! I want to crawl through my bookcases now and find the most obscure book I have !

Well, here's one that has a pretty cool opening line, anyway:

I stopped when I smelled the magic. It was strong magic. Old magic. And it carried a faint scent of the sea. And yet I was a thousand kilometers away from the nearest body of salt water.

Well, okay, first four lines. But they were short.

Now, will anyone guess?

[faeriemusicsmom.livejournal.com]

Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers, if I'm not mistaken.

Here's one: "The Prince was dead."

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

The first line of the prologue was too short and general, so I went for the first line of the first chapter and there are a WHOLE LOT of names that would make it obvious.

Six years after _______ returned to _______, and a bare season after he and my twin brother ____ nearly killed each other over which of them should be the king's heir, our father's estate at ______ was destroyed in a battle that began by accident.

And I'm just about to head out the door to turn this one back in to the library, so have a go at this one as well. I'll leave in the first letters of the names, though.

The big groundcar jerked to a stop centimeters from the vehicle ahead of it, and A------ P--, driving, swore under his breath. M---- settled back again in his seat beside him, wincing at a vision of the acrimonious street scene from which P--'s reflexes had delivered them.


Checkers, your line was setting off "You've read this! Recently!" bells in my head, but it wasn't until I saw faeriemusicsmom's comment that I actually went "OMG IT'S TOTALLY STRONG POISON HOW DID I NOT KNOW THAT."

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

This is fun!

"The Prince was dead."

Oo, is that from The Hallowed Hunt?

Here's one for the game (probably not too hard): "After Farmer Flint of the Middle Valley died, his widow stayed on at the farmhouse."

ETA: rosaleeluann, I can totally get your second one, but I'm going to keep my mouth shut now. ;) (And I have a sinking feeling I ought to recognize your first one, too...)

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Yay! You got it!

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

Ooh, fun! Here's a probably easy one:

"She scowled at her glass of orange juice."

And a probably not so easy one:

"On a clear August evening, borne upon the light breath of a fair wind, the fleet was entering Torbay."

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

I don't have a lot of books in my apartment (yet!) but here are two favorites;

"The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet."

and this one will be easy

"------, the head of a family of field mice, livend in an underground house in the vegetable garden of a farmer named Mr. Fitzgibbon."

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

I'll guess the hornblower series although I haven't read it for the second one.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Rosie, your first is A Coalition of Lions.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

The first one is The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

"The education bestowed on ****** ****** by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living."

[faeriemusicsmom.livejournal.com]

Yep, that was Hallowed Hunt ("The Prince was dead."). Good call--it's so short, it could have been a lot of things.

[faeriemusicsmom.livejournal.com]

The second one is A Civil Campaign, by Lois McMaster Bujold; the names are Armsman Pym, Miles, and Pym again.

This game is fun!

[(Anonymous)]

Because someone was going to post this eventually:
"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink"

And also:
Tumber Hill! It's my clamber-and-tumble-and-beech-and-bramble hill!

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! Oh! Cold Comfort Farm! I love that book with a passion!

Favorite Book Meme

[(Anonymous)]

O.K. I saw this post and HAD to comment...i've been lurking for a while, but this was too good to pass up. A fav. beginning of a book of mine (And my sisters) goes like this: "_____ was a devil. An apprentice,s devil." (The author was my childhood idol)
~~i-heart-sora-and-axel~~

[diadactic.livejournal.com]

Mother taught me to be polite to dragons.

I always loved that line.

[diadactic.livejournal.com]

I know the second one. The character is Mrs. Frisby; the book is Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH. I LOVED that series as a kid (ten, eleven) but don't much care for them now.

[bookaddict88.livejournal.com]

That's from Patricia C. Wrede's Talking to Dragons. I really need to re-read that series!

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

No, but good guess! They're favorites of mine as well.

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

Master and Commander for the first one!

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

That's right!

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

I know the first one but I'm going to give someone else a chance to get it first.

[bookaddict88.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like this! Here's one:

"This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it."

And another:

"Let's go fight the girls!"

[reader-marie.livejournal.com]

Unless I'm mistaken (I don't have the book to check), your second one is from Tehanu by Ursula K. LeGuin. (I love that book also! I think Tenar is one of my favorite characters of all time...)