in which I succumb to a meme

[truepenny]

First lines of ten favorite books (which turned out to be a smorgasboard of mystery, fantasy, children's literature, and sometimes all three):

The primroses were over.
--Richard Adams, Watership Down

Snow was falling on Riverside, great white feather-puffs that veiled the cracks in the facades of its ruined houses, slowly softening the harsh contours of jagged roof and fallen beams.
--Ellen Kushner, Swordspoint

Harriet Vane sat at her writing-table and stared out into Mecklenburg Square.
--Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

It was a dull autumn day and Jill Pole was crying behind the gym.
--C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

Although the label on the hair shampoo said Paris and had a picture of a beautiful girl with the Eiffel Tower behind her bare shoulder, it was forced to tell the truth in tiny print under the picture.
--Margaret Mahy, The Changeover

"Aunt Bee," said Jane, breathing heavily into her soup, "was Noah a cleverer back-room boy than Ulysses, or was Ulysses a cleverer back-room boy than Noah?"
--Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.
--Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

Polly sighed and laid her book face down on her bed.
--Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring cleaning his little home.
--Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Ever since his arrival at the Hotel Algonquin, Hamlet had spent most of his time sleeping.
--Val Schaffer, Algonquin Cat

Comments

[lcohen]

well i know and like five of them so that makes me want to give the other five a try!

have you read the fall of kings yet?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I own The Fall of the Kings, and I started reading it, but I hit a personal mental block when they started talking about what happened to Alec post-Richard, and I haven't been able to go on. I fell in love with Swordspoint when I was sixteen or so, and I'm more defensive of it than I realized.

Just out of curiosity, which are the five you don't know?

[lcohen]

it's interesting--everyone i've talked to seems to have hit some sort of block with the fall of kings, myself included. (my description: i like it but it's like eating too much cake.)

i've not read:

--Margaret Mahy, The Changeover

--Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar (though i've read other tey)

--Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

--Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock (i've read other jones, too)

--Val Schaffer, Algonquin Cat

i own fire and hemlock, i think, so that'll probably be the first one of these that i sample.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Well considering how much I like the ones of those I like, I should read the others.

I wish I knew what it was about Brat Farrar that makes it such a wonderful book. Unfortunately, it's got to the point where I can't read it any more, my mind finishes the paragraphs before my eye.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Most of these are books I can't read any longer because I love them so much. That was actually sort of my criterion for picking: which are books I've had long, passionate love affairs with? Gaudy Night is the newest on the list, and I read it for the first time in, I think, 1995. The others are all books I loved as a child or discovered as a teenager in that particular way that one DISCOVERS books when one finds them at the right time.

I wish I could explain Brat Farrar, because then I might be able to emulate it. There's something about the pacing, about the decorous calm of both narrative and characters despite the snarl of hatred and revenge beneath the surface ... nope, can't do it. Can only love it.

Which are the ones on my list you haven't read?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The Changeover and Algonquin Cat.

I think one of the things with Brat Farrar is seeing a family from inside-out. I mean they're strangers and they aren't. And then it's all so micro-fascinating.

Have you read Du Maurier's The Scapegoat which is another interloper in family novel?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

No. The only Du Maurier I've read is Rebecca, which freaked me out so badly I was frightened to try any of her others. (Which I know looks like a contradiction, since I adore Rebecca, but that's still my alleged logic on the subject.)

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Algonquin Cat. But I hate animal protagonist books. But I've read every other book on your list.

I can tell that this fight is going to go on in my brain for a while, and I'm going to end up putting the book on the to-look-for list anyhow.

margaret mahy...

[diony.livejournal.com]

Do you like other Mahy as well? The Tricksters used to be my favourite, with The Changeover coming in a close second, but the last time that I reread them both I realised that they'd switched places.

I ought to try reading Fire and Hemlock again; it drove me nuts the first time I read it & I have absolutely no recollection as to why.

Re: margaret mahy...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Fire and Hemlock is hard to read. I just think it's totally worth the payoff.

Is The Tricksters the one with the chick writing a novel in it? (Harry short for Ariadne?) Because I've read that once (from the library) and really really really liked it, and I've never been able to find it again. *sob*

I also quite like The Catalogue of the Universe, Memory less so, although I appreciate it intellectually quite a bit. And there's another one I've read once ... The Haunting? something like that--anyway, I need to find & read it again, because I don't think I got it the first time round.

Re: margaret mahy...

[diony.livejournal.com]

The Tricksters is in fact the one with the chick writing a novel in it, and happily it was reprinted in 1999 so it now no longer requires years of hunting through used bookstores to find.

I think I read The Catalogue of the Universe when I was in high school, but I don't recall anything about it. I hadn't heard of any of the others -- perhaps I should examine what my library has to offer.