Sunday, May 20, 2007

First Lines

The Guardian book blog has a feature on first lines of books, and is asking readers to submit their favourites. You can suggest your own here, and read the current list.
Among those quoted :
  • from Ann Quin's Berg : "A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father."
  • from L'Etranger, by Albert Camus : "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know."
  • Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep : "It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills."
  • James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man : "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo."
  • Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar : "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

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