This is Here's Luck's fault.

[truepenny]

Well, that and my head cold.

heres_luck has mutated the meme: first lines of favorite non-fiction books. Like melymbrosia I find some strange, wild delight in reading lists of first lines, both of books I know and books I don't, so I'm going to serve as a vector for HL's meme and see if it can be spread.

Bwahaha.

Before I start, though, my absolute favorite non-fiction book cannot appear on the list, because I don't own it. Stephen Booth, King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy.

But other than that, here's my list.

(N.b., unlike HL, I'm including lit. crit. in my list, because I'd be lying if I left things like the Russ and the Bate out. I have, however, limited myself to single-author books (whether individual or corporate). I've also defined the "first line" with a good deal of caprice and contrariness; sometimes it's the first line of the Introduction, Prologue, Foreword, etc.; sometimes it's the first line of Chapter One.)

For me, the terror--the real terror, as opposed to whatever demons and boogeys which might have been living in my own mind--began on an afternoon in October of 1957.
--Stephen King, Danse Macabre

We need stories to help us make sense of the world.
--Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid

GLOTOLOG, n. stand. Intergalactic, current.
--Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing

On the morning of November 30, 1974, I woke, as I usually do on a field expedition, at daybreak.
--Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, Lucy: THe Beginnings of Humankind

Her eyes are glazed with the terror of understanding.
--Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture

One evening when I was about twelve, I was looking through the living room bookshelves for something to read, and pulled out a little Modern Library book, in the old limp leather binding; it had a queer title, A Dreamer's Tales.
--Ursula K. LeGuin, The Language of the Night

On March 27, 1283, King Edward I of England named Kevin le Strange to be Lord of Aberwyvern--a rich but rebellious area of northwest Wales.
--David Macaulay, Castle
[Okay, yes, stretching "non-fiction" just slightly, since Kevin le Strange is imaginary. But the intent of the book is non-fiction.]

I grew up around a father and a mother who read every chance they got, who took us to the library every Thursday night to load up on books for the coming week.
--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

In the opening pages of Henry Rider Haggard's bestselling novel King Solomon's Mines, we discover a map.
--Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest

The nineteenth century saw in primitive religions two peculiarities which separated them as a block from the great religions of the world.
--Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo

And, cheating slightly because I haven't finished it yet, but damn it's good,

Any study of late medieval religion must begin with the liturgy, for within that great seasonal cycle of fast and festival, of ritual observance and symbolic gesture, lay Christians found the paradigms and the stories which shaped their perception of the world and their place in it.
--Eamon Duffy, Stripping the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

So you have Idols of Perversity too! He did a follow-up to it, whose title I now forget; I didn't like it as much.

This is good. I only have four of those, because I don't read nearly as much nonfiction. Things to put on the reading list.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I've seen the other Dijkstra book; can't recall the title, either. But Idols of Perversity is just grand.

The Duffy's a heavyweight, just so you know. :)

[heresluck]

Point of interest: tzikeh actually mutated the meme; I merely perpetuated the mutation. Damn my lack of textual attribution! I should go back and include more lit crit in penance.