Love this book so much! We had a 42 themed wedding - date of the wedding added up to 42, time the ceremony began, and references sprinkled throughout the whole thing. It was awesome!
Cliché, I know but Jane Austen had me at
'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.'
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it.” JD Salinger
Breaking the rule with the first line of Amy Hempel's short story, "The Harvest": "The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me." https://www.pifmagazine.com/1998/09/the-harvest/
I've read whole books with less to them than this bullet of a short story.
I can imagine! One thing I love is that for a subset of women in the US, reading this line gives so much specific information - it's brilliant. Like all literature, the subtext isn't obvious to everyone. I'm sure a bunch of guys in the US wouldn't get all the deep connotations either!
"The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves."
“The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee and said, “Why don’t you go back and sleep? We can ring you if he shows up.”
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
No preamble: straight into the story.
I want you to know that after about 6 months of thinking to myself, "I really need to read that book again now that it's not a school assignment," this post is what finally got me to pull the trigger. It's even better when you're not being quizzed on it!
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream". -Shirley Jackson Haunting of Hill House
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up to him.
“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men.”
Mark Lawrence, Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor, #1)
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice-not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mothers death, but because he is the reason I believe in God;…John Irving “ A prayer for Owen Meany”
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
He struggled with the opening for a while. Then, he was taking his family on vacation, and the ice thing came to him. So, he turned his family around and went back home to write it.
"I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name."
Nietzsche twilight of idols first quote "Idleness is the start of all psychology. What? Would psychology then be—a vice?" it provides the world that Nietzsche lived in it doesn't give a steady pull in like lofty "it was pure then in those days" it smacks wakes the reader to open with controversy.
Nietzsche(N) Crepúsculo de los Ídolos, cita 1 <> da el mundo que N en que N experimentaba, no da lenta motivación para lector como estas suaves citas <> Sin embargo, da controversia.
Two of William Gibsons's novels, Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” and Count Zero: “They set a slamhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair.”
If you like a “meaty” read—something to really sink your teeth into—Stephenson’s your guy. This was my first Stephenson book, and it sent me on a great journey through all his books.
This has been and will be until we have a better sci-fi writer. It will be a while. I almost wept reading this line. It has so much meaning after learning much about world history. But no worries. A comet should wipe out this conversation quickly. Get your beacon rings ready to ship out!
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" -Neuromancer by William Gibson. This will always by my answer to this question.
Something that I saw online years ago was that those of us who remember analog tv will picture static, and those who don't will picture either blue or black. An example of how changing times alters literature in retrospect.
The first sentence of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife".
“…and it's a story that might bore you, but you don't have to listen, because I always knew it was going to be like that.” The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis. Very angsty book but it’s one of my favorites.
Let me tell you about Brightness Falls. I have read that book probably 10 times cover to cover. I don't know why, but I just love it. I highly recommend it.
I met a 21-year-old in La, named Ishmael. I said unusual name so can I Call You Ishmael? He had never read the line.
A fine product of the Californian educational system
How many people realize that the people of Islam trace their heritage back to Abraham through his son Ismael, in contrast to Jews who trace their line through Isaac? What was Melville saying?
Fellow survivor here. Once I realized it wasn’t a joke, I was sure the (scientifically incorrect) cetology of whales meant that I’d died and was caught in a hell loop.
Also, this from Perdido Street Station by China Miéville: “A window burst open high above the market. A basket flew from it and arced towards the oblivious crowd. It spasmed in mid-air, then spun and continued earthwards at a slower, uneven pace.”
It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon. - Helter Skeltet by Vincent Bugliosi
I h...(dislike) all those references to completely different realities/times!
They take me out of the immediate story, make me think back at least two books, make me need to be scientific instead of a consumer. Aaargh!!!
And yes, I love them.
There was a Master come unto the earth, born in the Holy Land of Indiana, raised in the mystical hills east of Fort Wayne.
The Master learned of this world in the public schools of Indiana, and as he grew, in his trade as a mechanic of automobiles.
“I wouldn’t have known about the dead man if I hadn’t walked into the kitchen at the exact moment my one and only lodger was about to warm up an eyeball in the wave-cooker”.
Women on their own run in Alice’s family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack, and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark.
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice “
A short story and not a book, but: "The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light".
I contemplated answering the premise of the question by using the last line, but the first line is pretty damn good in and of itself. I love the use of “first”, “last”, “half” and “time” all in that first sentence. Not to mention the story is short and sweet.
This is more like a "most memorable" than necessarily "favorite."
But when I started A Deadly Education I: A.) Didn't know what to expect and B.) Had just finished a very sobering non-fiction. So this had me laughing:
"I decided that Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life."
"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." Anthony Burgess - Earthly Powers
Okay, beat mine but it was after numerous chapters of ‘nothingness’. The chapter began, “Conceive now the experience of existence as it is apprehended by the dawning consciousness of the Great Entity”.
Dion Fortune’s ‘The Cosmic Doctrine’.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle” covid abandonment, genocides, climate inferno and y’all still chillin to Dickens.
Yeah there's quite a few differing translations of this sentence but 'monstrous vermin' is by far my favourite :) 'giant insect's doesn't have the same ring.
Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.
“The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.” - IT by Stephen King
Colfer did a fairly good job of impersonating DA's voice, but the man didn't rise from the grave to write it.
I'm of two minds whether to include it (see what I did there).
Oddly, I've seen people include, Dirk, Salmon, Teatime, etc. in the count, but they have nothing to do with it.
- "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."
- "The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone."
- "All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
- "In the beginning, there was only the mountain."
- "Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened."
Comments
'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.'
From then on I was hooked.
I aim with my eye.
I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind. 2)
I kill with my heart.😎
I've read whole books with less to them than this bullet of a short story.
So perfectly sums up a typical day in the North of England.
Ted Lewis, Jack's Return Home
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
No preamble: straight into the story.
How's that for a start of a book..!
#BookSky
"Mr. Mean lives up to his name. He lived in what could've been a nice house, but wasn't."
-the Martian, by Andy Weir
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
Mark Lawrence, Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor, #1)
📚The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan
The opening line of the Gunslinger has lived in my head for 20 something years now.
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
— Max Shulman, (Sleep Till Noon)
They lie... not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation.
Possibly the word we're looking for here is...
…dormant.
🩵
Red Harvest
Space provides only a few examples.
I’m pretty much fucked. That’s my considered opinion. Fucked.”
-Alex Rider: Ark Angel, by Anthony Horowitz
The Crow Road by Iain Banks.
You can check it out in a bathroom at MaraLago.
Neal Stephenson, Seveneves
📖
The Crow Road — Iain Banks.
A fine product of the Californian educational system
- Typo opening sentence, recalled first printing of Beverly Sills autobiography, “Bubbles”
Never been more perfectly apt.
As in all good books, we later grow with the characters and learn that he is "just" a spren, just the sliver of a god.
They take me out of the immediate story, make me think back at least two books, make me need to be scientific instead of a consumer. Aaargh!!!
And yes, I love them.
The Master learned of this world in the public schools of Indiana, and as he grew, in his trade as a mechanic of automobiles.
Richard Bach
'Illusions'
Messiah's handbook
Excerpt From Lake Silence by
Anne Bishop.
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Tom Wolfe
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
Apologize!
Pull out his eyes!
Apologize!”
James Joyce
Portrait of An Artist As a Young Man
42
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
Random: Did y'all know Tom Holland was in Ron Howard's "In the Heart of the Sea" released in 2015?
"Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
- The Crow Road, Iain Banks
The gunslinger followed.
"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last."
But when I started A Deadly Education I: A.) Didn't know what to expect and B.) Had just finished a very sobering non-fiction. So this had me laughing:
"I decided that Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life."
And to be fair, they're both British authors, and have a very similar voice. I often say Good Omens could easily have been written by Adams.
― Clive Barker, The Thief of Always
Dion Fortune’s ‘The Cosmic Doctrine’.
John Dies at the End
Absolute fire and completely true.
Terry Pratchett’s writing and Douglas Adams’ writing can be really similar
I'm of two minds whether to include it (see what I did there).
Oddly, I've seen people include, Dirk, Salmon, Teatime, etc. in the count, but they have nothing to do with it.
Not my fave book but a memorable opening sentence.
Anthony Burgess
- "The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone."
- "All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
- "In the beginning, there was only the mountain."
- "Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened."
(Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett)