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

[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.)