Okay, so what's the first line in the book you are reading NOW?

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'A burning scrap of paper drifts down out of the rain. A magic carpet on fire. It falls with a hiss to the wet stones of the street.'

― Rumpie, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:13 (twenty years ago)

While i read the Journal of Sensory Deprivation, Wanda, my former wife, read Elle.

― ai lien (kold_krush), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:16 (twenty years ago)

"Stroll up Unter Den Linden, past all those Schinckel buildings you're obliged to admire, and on to Museumsinsel, the island where Berlin was born."

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:21 (twenty years ago)

Mother uttered a faint cry.

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:28 (twenty years ago)

Imagine a New York City apartment at six in the morning.

― luna (luna.c), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:31 (twenty years ago)

Strange clouded fragments of an ancient glory,
Late lingerers of the company divine,
They breathe of that far world wherefrom they come,
Lost halls of heaven and Olympian air.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:35 (twenty years ago)

I like that, where is it from?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:36 (twenty years ago)

Vaughn died yesterday in his last car crash.

― David Merryweather Goes To Far (scarlet), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:36 (twenty years ago)

I like that, where is it from?

-- Adam In Real Life (adamr...), July 26th, 2005.

are you asking or is that the first line from your book? if you're asking, it's edith hamilton quoting homer (i think) in her _mythology: timeless tales of gods and heroes_.
if you weren't asking, i like that, where is it from?

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:42 (twenty years ago)

'Anyone living in the United States in the early 1990's and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having being scared out of his skin.'

― Uncledoj, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:44 (twenty years ago)

Not counting the intro:

"The study of musical sound is important only because music is important, and because the quality of sound is important to music."

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:46 (twenty years ago)

if you weren't asking, i like that, where is it from?

I was asking!

(that's not a line either)

(nor that)

(nor this)

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:46 (twenty years ago)

My first impression was that the stranger's eyes were of an unusually light blue.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:47 (twenty years ago)

I know what book Luna is reading. It's a great book.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:49 (twenty years ago)

"Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos."

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:49 (twenty years ago)

to wound the autumnal city.
   So howled out for the world to give him a name.
   The in-dark answered with wind.
   All you know I know: careening astronauts and bank-clerks glancing at the clock at lunch; actresses cowling at light-ringed mirrors and freight elevator operators grinding a thumbful of grease on a steel handle; student riots; know that dark woman in bodegas shook their heads last week because in six months prices have risen outlandishly; how coffee tastes after you've held it in your mouth, cold, a whole minute.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 16:51 (twenty years ago)

Raggae has risen, against the odds, to wield a tremendous influence on contemporary popular culture.

― Boring Satanic Space Jazz (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 17:33 (twenty years ago)

Are you Alex in SF?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 17:36 (twenty years ago)

Christmas Eve 1978, and I'm ten years old.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 18:10 (twenty years ago)

Not like
A lone beautiful bird
These poems now rise in great white flocks
Against my mind's vast hills
Startled by God
Breaking a branch
When His foot
Touches
Earth
Near
Me.

― Laura H. (laurah), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 18:48 (twenty years ago)

In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier's greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.

― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 21:19 (twenty years ago)

On March 10, 1914, militant suffragist Mary Richardson entered the National Gallery in London and, with an axe, slashed a Velazquez painting of a nude Venus.

― Cheeseburger-style funbox to GO! Fries come in regular and crepuscular size (Eas, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 21:24 (twenty years ago)

I started a new book today.
It begins:
"The worst times in European history were in the fourteenth century, during and after the Hundred Years War, in the seventeenth century at the time of the Thirty Years War, and in the first half of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century may be worse than any of these."

Another gloomy summer read.

― Cathy (Cathy), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 21:30 (twenty years ago)

Listen to my last words anywhere.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 21:33 (twenty years ago)

The perspective of history begins with the origin of the earth, and develops through geological time until the stage is ultimately set for human evolution.

― Anti-Pope Consortium (noodle vague), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 21:41 (twenty years ago)

Listen to my last words anywhere.

Distance, distance, distance, I'm still moving...

― Cheeseburger-style funbox to GO! Fries come in regular and crepuscular size (Eas, Tuesday, 26 July 2005 21:53 (twenty years ago)

I came to New York to find myself and get a fresh start.

― Homosexual II (Homosexual II), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 21:57 (twenty years ago)

the other book i'm reading at the moment:

"What about a teakettle?"

― Homosexual II (Homosexual II), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 21:58 (twenty years ago)

There was only one thought in Gabriel Cleary's mind, and it chilled him.

― Teh HoBB (the pirate king), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 22:04 (twenty years ago)

"Deaths and injuries on Britain's roads have been falling steadily since the war, even though today there are more vehicles on our roads than ever before."

(there's a (theoretical/imaginary) prize for the first person to identify the particular hell through which i'm putting myself.)

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)

Living Yoga is a powerful inspiration for those that want to have their cake and eat it too.

― Tannenbaum Schmidt (Nik), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 23:09 (twenty years ago)

'The primary meaning of the word 'equity' as it is used in this book and indeed in the Australian legal system should be clarified. By it is meant not the moral notion of 'equity' in any abstract or philosophical sense, but rather the specific jurisprudential notion of equity that entered legal institutional history through the original English High Court of Chancery.'

― gem (trisk), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 23:19 (twenty years ago)

He was facing Seventh Avenue, at Times Square

― Seuss, Wednesday, 27 July 2005 00:54 (twenty years ago)

There are times when what is to be said looks out of the past at you - looks out like someone at a window and you in the street as you walk along.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 01:33 (twenty years ago)

for school: "I have been interested in empires for a long time, but it has been a furtive and guilty interest."

for me: "I got a call at work, and it was my father."

― derrick (derrick), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 04:52 (twenty years ago)

Not counting the preface or the prologue-

"Just as the German Reformation was largely the work of a single individual, Martin Luther, so the Scottish Reformation was the achievement of one man of heroic will and tireless energy: John Knox."

(He must be of tireless energy to go around forever hitting ILX0rs in the head with his unmentionables.)

― It Is What A Man Does Which Demeans Him, Not What Is Done To Him (kate), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 06:48 (twenty years ago)

Loga had cracked like an egg.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 07:39 (twenty years ago)

Dear Alex,

You have I Have
Flown to Beijing walked to superdrug
Scaled th great wall De-scaled the kettle
observed the rich tapestry watched the eastenders omnibus.....
of chinese street life

― battlingspacemonkey (battlingspacemonkey), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 07:45 (twenty years ago)

At noon, when Dr Charles Ransom moored his houseboat in the entrance to the river, he saw Quilter, the idiot son of the old woman who lived in the ramshackle barge outside the yacht basin, standing on a spur of exposed rock on the opposite bank and smiling at the dead birds floating in the water below his feet.

― Bill A (Bill A), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 07:45 (twenty years ago)

George Bernard Shaw described marriage as an institution that brings together two people under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition until death do them part."

and

Golden Age? In us?

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 12:21 (twenty years ago)

If we're allowed screenplays:

"A Pinto station wagon rattles onto the Massachusetts Turnpike, past Weston, onto Interstate 95, and into the town of Wellsmith... past a gas station, a shack, and a goat."

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 12:25 (twenty years ago)

This is a true story.

― ianinportland (ianinportland), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 17:58 (twenty years ago)

"Lev Glevo. Lev Glebovich? A name like that's enough to twist your tongue off, my dear fellow."

― The Lex (The Lex), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 18:02 (twenty years ago)

"Scrooge McDuck is the world's richest duck! He loves his money, all five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillion dollars and sixteen cents of it!"

Plus SOMEBODY has to cop to it, so I will: "It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind."

― Douglas (Douglas), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 18:29 (twenty years ago)

Grimly - it's not The World According to Jeremy Clarkson is it?

― Cathy (Cathy), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

"On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

"We should never confuse history with nostalgia but, when we look at historical practice,it is very difficult to make sense of a lot of it without recourse to nostalgia"

― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 21:56 (twenty years ago)

"The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child"

― Bidfurd, Wednesday, 27 July 2005 22:17 (twenty years ago)

Budapest
Saturday, July 10, 1999

The sweet smell of a triple-crème torta hung in the air like a good idea.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 23:08 (twenty years ago)

An aristocrat was riding down the street in his carriage.

― ai lien (kold_krush), Thursday, 28 July 2005 12:43 (twenty years ago)

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...

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 28 July 2005 12:49 (twenty years ago)

"The main text consists of classified notes on clinical conditions, drugs and preparations."

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 28 July 2005 12:49 (twenty years ago)

eleven months pass...

Bored at work and reading so I'll revive this thread.

"Is Orientalism an eternal given?"

― Paul Kelly (kelly), Friday, 7 July 2006 08:50 (nineteen years ago)

Not counting quotes and prefaces...

"Two incidents from my childhood greatly enriched my understanding of the world and sent me on course to become a theoretical physicist."

― Custard Subsidence (kate), Friday, 7 July 2006 08:55 (nineteen years ago)

I first met him in Piraeus

― RJG (RJG), Friday, 7 July 2006 08:58 (nineteen years ago)

"Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend - the weekend of the Yale game."

― Gerard (Gerard), Friday, 7 July 2006 08:59 (nineteen years ago)

I don't have any books with me so I'll give the first line of the script I'm reading

INT. OFFICE
DAY

Sam Coughlan is twenty nine, a charismatic and proud kind of guy. He sits at a drafting board, one of twenty in a series of rows and stares at everyone drawing lines, it's like the opening scene of "The Apartment". Sam stares ahead blankly.

― Earwig oh! (Mark C), Friday, 7 July 2006 09:03 (nineteen years ago)

one:

Anyone who tries today to talk about the question of Christian faith in the presence of people who are not thorougly at home with ecclesiastical language and thought (whether by vocation or by convention) soon comes to sense the alien - and alienating - sense of such an enterprise.

two:

"Men half your age and double your weight have been slain on these wastes by Extremity of Cold," said the Earl of Lostwithiel, Lord Warden of the STannaries, and Rider of the Forest and Chase of Dartmoor, to one of his two fellow-travelers.

― Maria (Maria), Friday, 7 July 2006 09:13 (nineteen years ago)

Ooh, I recognise the second one. It starts off slow but really gets going midway through.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 7 July 2006 09:14 (nineteen years ago)

The Professor sat behind his desk, dwarfed by his vast red leather armchair.

― Orange (Orange), Friday, 7 July 2006 09:44 (nineteen years ago)

Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of the suburban Cherbourg, 14 October 1905.

(Gibson & Sterling, The Difference Engine)

― koogy wonderland (koogs), Friday, 7 July 2006 09:44 (nineteen years ago)

At about nine o'clock in the morning at the end of November, during a thaw, the Warsaw train was approaching Petersburg at full speed.

― The Lex (The Lex), Friday, 7 July 2006 09:49 (nineteen years ago)

In 1815, M. Charles Francois Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D___.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Friday, 7 July 2006 10:29 (nineteen years ago)

I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me.

― Dolores Haze (Arachne), Friday, 7 July 2006 10:41 (nineteen years ago)

Hack first heard about Jennifer Government at the water cooler. He was only there because the one on his floor was out; Legal was going to come down on Nature’s Springs like a ton of shit, you could bet on that.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 7 July 2006 10:46 (nineteen years ago)

Dr Andras Zakar was returning from morning mass at Vizicaros Convent on Sunday, 19 November 1948 when an unmarked car pulled up alongside him.

― Pete W (peterw), Friday, 7 July 2006 10:49 (nineteen years ago)

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the Univerisity of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescirbed for surgeons in the army.

― Merrini (Mezza), Friday, 7 July 2006 10:51 (nineteen years ago)

I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don't suppose I have ever come much closer to saying 'Tra-la-la' as I did the lathering, for i was feeling in mid-season form this morning.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Friday, 7 July 2006 10:57 (nineteen years ago)

And I also have Merrini's book on my bedside table - the complete works that is - which ends with a great line too..."Some day the true story may be told".

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Friday, 7 July 2006 11:00 (nineteen years ago)

The afternoon smog couldn't hide the spectacular view from the roof of the Capitol Records building.

― Ms. Misery TX (MissMiseryTX), Friday, 7 July 2006 12:13 (nineteen years ago)

Not long ago I met a well-known surgeon dying in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia.

Ned, that has to be Wodehouse!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, 7 July 2006 12:20 (nineteen years ago)

i am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.

― SQUARECOATS (plsmith), Friday, 7 July 2006 12:24 (nineteen years ago)

"Gemma, tell your story again," Shana begged, putting her arms around her grandmother and breathing in that special smell of talcum and lemon that seemed to belong only to her.

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Friday, 7 July 2006 12:36 (nineteen years ago)

And I also have Merrini's book on my bedside table - the complete works that is - which ends with a great line too..."Some day the true story may be told"

I've got a copy of that but I've never actually read it.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 7 July 2006 12:41 (nineteen years ago)

one:

Want to take your business to the next level? Use new strategies to improve your income, and locate parks and truck stops where purchased orgasms are a snap.

two:

Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler!

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 7 July 2006 19:47 (nineteen years ago)

"Maria Alejandra was on her way home from school when she saw a man dressed as a guardia civil creep out of the bomb-blackened building that had been Señor Merello's bakery before the shell hit it."

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 7 July 2006 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

locate parks and truck stops where purchased orgasms are a snap.

!!!!

― Ms. Misery TX (MissMiseryTX), Friday, 7 July 2006 19:55 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not sure if that counts as the real first line, to be honest. The *real* first line might also be:

"Oh God, I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel"

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 7 July 2006 19:58 (nineteen years ago)

It had been a bad night, and when he tried to drive home he had a terrible argument with his car.

― StanM (StanM), Friday, 7 July 2006 20:33 (nineteen years ago)

"South Pasadena is a small city of some twenty thousand residents who live within three square miles of mostly aging homes and limited commercial property."

― Fsck Washing Ong's Hat (Chris Barrus), Friday, 7 July 2006 21:18 (nineteen years ago)

"Take 'em an inch and they'll give you a hell."

― Alicia Fucking Silverstone (sexyDancer), Friday, 7 July 2006 21:25 (nineteen years ago)

"I was born on May 6th, 1856, at Freiberg in Moravia, a small town in what is now Czechoslovakia."

now surely someone will know who the author is!

― ryan (ryan), Friday, 7 July 2006 21:25 (nineteen years ago)

Scott Pilgrim is dating a high schooler!

You're in for a world of fun!

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Friday, 7 July 2006 21:26 (nineteen years ago)

"It was a dark and stormy night."

Seriously!

― Marmot 4-Tay: forth-coming, my child. forth-coming most righteous champion (mar, Friday, 7 July 2006 21:30 (nineteen years ago)

"Would i find La Maga?
Most of the time it was just a case of me putting an appearence, going along the Rue de Seine, and i would see her slender form against the olive-ashen light which floats along the river as she crossed back and forth on the Pont des Arts, or lean over the iron rail looking at the water."

― emekars (emekars), Friday, 7 July 2006 21:34 (nineteen years ago)

"Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file."

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Friday, 7 July 2006 21:37 (nineteen years ago)

"Here is your chance to let us know your opinion about the BarBri review course."

― Big Loud Ape Mountain (Big Loud Mountain Ape), Friday, 7 July 2006 21:59 (nineteen years ago)

"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now nothing more than estates of the Buonaparte family."

― stet (stet), Friday, 7 July 2006 22:04 (nineteen years ago)

When Europeans began imagining Africa beyond the Sahara, the continent they pictured was a dreamscape, a site for fantasies of the fearsome and the supernatural.

― Party Time Country Female (pullapartgirl), Friday, 7 July 2006 23:23 (nineteen years ago)

It's a new elevator, freshly pressed to the rails, and it's not built to fall this fast.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 7 July 2006 23:26 (nineteen years ago)

"The genius of Rome expired with Theodosius, the last of the successors of Augustus and Constantine who appeared in the field at the head of their armies, and whose authority was universally acknowledged throughout the whole extent of the empire."

― Toad Roundgrin (noodle vague), Friday, 7 July 2006 23:28 (nineteen years ago)

"Things are different today".

OTM

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Friday, 7 July 2006 23:43 (nineteen years ago)

Historically, water rights were administered in Australia and other countries on the basis of a patchwork of statutes and common law riparian rights.

― gem (trisk), Saturday, 8 July 2006 03:10 (nineteen years ago)

This book is an outcome of my curiosity about why some cities grow and why others stagnate and decay.

― gbx (skowly), Saturday, 8 July 2006 03:14 (nineteen years ago)

Stacy Hamilton lay under the covers, still fully dressed, and stared at the ceiling.

― Steve Shasta (Steve Shasta), Saturday, 8 July 2006 04:18 (nineteen years ago)

Stuart does not like the manuscript.

― Stephen X (Stephen X), Saturday, 8 July 2006 05:26 (nineteen years ago)

In the year 2000, Brazil commemorated not only the passing of the century and the millennium but also the five hundred years since her discovery.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Saturday, 8 July 2006 07:03 (nineteen years ago)

One day in the middle of the twentieth century I sat in an old graveyard which had not yet been demolished, in the Kensington area of London, when a young policeman stepped off the path and came over to me.

― estela (estela), Saturday, 8 July 2006 10:17 (nineteen years ago)

I am Misha Borisovich Vainberg, age thirty, a grossly overweight man with small, deeply set blue eyes, a pretty Jewish beak that brings to mind the most distinguished breed of parrot, and lips so delicate you would want to wipe them with the naked back of your hand.

― gooblar (gooblar), Saturday, 8 July 2006 12:23 (nineteen years ago)

I think that everything, or at least the part of everything that happened to me, started with the Roman Architecture mix-up.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 8 July 2006 13:04 (nineteen years ago)

I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria.

― joseph (joseph), Saturday, 8 July 2006 13:21 (nineteen years ago)

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

Actually, I finished that book yesterday. The current one is:

"The name which appears on the cinema screen is Iris in her unmistakable handwriting."

― "C" (Holey), Saturday, 8 July 2006 16:05 (nineteen years ago)

When he is standing as he is now, head tilted back before melting into a slow roll of the neck, pink tongue poking out from between his lips before retreating again, he is likely to send an instinct of unease starting through the mind of his opponent.

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 8 July 2006 16:09 (nineteen years ago)

We got up at dawn, ignored the yolky sun, loaded our navy blue Austin with suitcases and then drove straight to the coast, stopping only on the verge of Sarajevo, so I could pee.

― wmlynch (wlynch), Saturday, 8 July 2006 16:17 (nineteen years ago)

It not only is my pleasure to announce to you this morning our discovery of this marvelous storehouse containing, among other things, a monumental collection of manuscripts inscribed on ridulian crystal paper, but I also take pride in giving you our arguments for the authenticity of our discoveries, to tell you why we believe we have uncovered the original journals of Leto II, the God Emperor.

― choinklate (nickalicious), Saturday, 8 July 2006 18:50 (nineteen years ago)

i just finished that.

― jeffrey (johnson), Saturday, 8 July 2006 19:31 (nineteen years ago)

Now, I think:
"The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights in an empty auditorium."

― milo z (mlp), Saturday, 8 July 2006 19:34 (nineteen years ago)

2)
Preface - The "what ifs" can kill you.
Chapter One - At noon on September 13, a passing agent ducked his head into Dennis Lormel's office.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Tuesday, 11 July 2006 04:20 (nineteen years ago)

Buried among the records of the United States patent office for the year 1897 is a rathe runusual entry, no. 580,035, registered in the name of Thaddeus Cahill.

― milton parker (Jon L), Tuesday, 11 July 2006 04:37 (nineteen years ago)

sorry typo, drunk

― milton parker (Jon L), Tuesday, 11 July 2006 04:37 (nineteen years ago)

"Could we classify the luxuriant growth of objects as we do a flora or fauna, complete with tropical and glacial species, sudden mutations, and varities threatened by extinction?"

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Tuesday, 11 July 2006 04:51 (nineteen years ago)

all of these make me want to quit reading for good. holey's first especially makes me want to punch someone in the face. i guess the first sentence is hard.

― sunny successor (katharine), Tuesday, 11 July 2006 12:35 (nineteen years ago)

first one:
"Like a match struck in a darkened room:
Two white girls in flannel nightgowns and red vinyl roller skates with white laces, tracing tentative circles on a cracked blue slate sidewalk at seven oçlock on an evening in July."

second:
"There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened."

― spectra (spectra), Tuesday, 11 July 2006 15:02 (nineteen years ago)

nine months pass...

"Bridesley. Birmingham.
Two o'clock. Thousands came back from dinner along streets."

― Tom D., Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:52 (eighteen years ago)

"Since I'm a man writing a book about man's inhumanity toward woman, I feel I should explain my motives, if only by way of exculpation."

― Tuomas, Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:57 (eighteen years ago)

"The world is full of broken people."

― onimo, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:11 (eighteen years ago)

"My name is Bruno Salvador."

― chap, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:15 (eighteen years ago)

"I made it to 199 and stuck out my thumb."

― treefell, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:15 (eighteen years ago)

"WHILE the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. "

― braveclub, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:15 (eighteen years ago)

"In late December 2000, less than a month before his inauguration, President-elect George W. Bush was still debating who should be his secretery of defense."

― m coleman, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:27 (eighteen years ago)

"Happy families are all happy in the exact same way. Unhappy families all have their own unique ways of being unhappy." or, er, something like that. i can't check because i'm at work, doing uh... work.

― modestmickey, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:28 (eighteen years ago)

"it worked -- the machine has been destroyed."

― Ste, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:34 (eighteen years ago)

"Our starting point is a red-brick pub built at the end of the nineteenth century. A road sign affixed to its wall points the direction of our journey: B480 Cowley."

― The Wayward Johnny B, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:36 (eighteen years ago)

"One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary."

― Matt #2, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:37 (eighteen years ago)

"Scene 1: On a cold and sunny morning in october 1985, John Whittaker entered his office in the molecular biology building of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and switched on his Eclipse MV/800 computer"

― Alan, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:38 (eighteen years ago)

Lurking in a little English country church, at Preston Bissett in Buckinghamshire, is an object lesson in the difficulty of understanding the religious outlook of past generations.

― Masonic Boom, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:39 (eighteen years ago)

I know what Matt #2 is reading!

― braveclub, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:40 (eighteen years ago)

ditto

― Alan, Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:40 (eighteen years ago)

That makes three of us

― Tom D., Thursday, 19 April 2007 12:42 (eighteen years ago)

Four of us. I think i know what braveclub is reading, but not sure.

What i am reading :

"A green hunting cap squeezedthe top of the fleshy balloon of a head."

― Jibe, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:05 (eighteen years ago)

Google tells me i was right about what braveclub is reading.

― Jibe, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:06 (eighteen years ago)

I'm intruiged as to what Ste's might be.

― chap, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:12 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, I spotted Braveclub's, too.

― Masonic Boom, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:13 (eighteen years ago)

well, tbh its a comic.

xp

― Ste, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:13 (eighteen years ago)

"Thick weather in the chops of the Channel and a dirty night, with the strong north-east wind bringing rain from the low sky and racing cloud: Ushant somewhere away on the starboard bow, the Scillies to larboard, but never a light, never a star to be seen; and no observation for the last four days."

― rener, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:20 (eighteen years ago)

"Evening, and a lowly servant sat beneath the Rashomon, waiting for the rain to end."

JohnnyB, you wouldn't be reading Isolarion by any chance?

― ledge, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:22 (eighteen years ago)

I have no hesitation in admitting that the older I get the more London becomes an obsession with me, so much so that I find myself ill at ease elsewhere, a feeling familiar to Dr Johnson.

― Ned Trifle II, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:27 (eighteen years ago)

"The Victorians are still with us."

Boring first line, eh?

― Groke, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:31 (eighteen years ago)

After a tedious confinement to a country hut, where I dwelt like Diogenes in his tub, taking as much delight in my books as an alchemist does in his bellows, I tired with seven years' search after knowledge, and began to reckon with myself for my time and examine what a Solomon my diligent enquiry into the uncertain guesses of our forefathers had made me.

― Ned Trifle II, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:31 (eighteen years ago)

As American Airlines Flight 11 hit the World Trade Center's North Tower and United Airlines Flight 175 sliced through Tower Two, three people who had never met had their day of reckoning.

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:31 (eighteen years ago)

xpost

I'm always reading about eight books at a time but those two are my favourites.

Groke, you're gonna have to tell us what that book is - 'cos it's gonna bug me otherwise.

― Ned Trifle II, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:33 (eighteen years ago)

matt #2: the greenish dead eye of the tv tube.

and jibe is reading an old favourite of mine.

mine is: 'All this happened, more or less.'

― estela, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:35 (eighteen years ago)

It's The Victorians by A N Wilson. It's quite good actually! Elegantly written and it's made me grin a lot more often than most history books, generally at the bits involving Gladstone, who Wilson is plainly exasperated by.

― Groke, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:35 (eighteen years ago)

MORAL philosophy, or the science of human nature, may be treated after two different manners; each of which has its peculiar merit, and may contribute to the entertainment, instruction, and reformation of mankind.

― Frogman Henry, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:37 (eighteen years ago)

Deep in the jungle, up to a height of 4,800 metres, the San Martin and Cashiriari fields in Camisea are home to one of the most important non-associated natural gas reserves in Latin America.

― Grandpont Genie, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:39 (eighteen years ago)

Some of those books sound amazing. I wish I knew what they were. Except for Rener's. I can make a reasonable guess as to what it might be.

My current one is:

"Imagine that you have to break someone's arm."

― accentmonkey, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:39 (eighteen years ago)

"It appears from tradition, as well as some parish registers still extant, that the lands of Dalcastle (or Dalchastel, as it is often spelled) were possessed by a family of the name of Colwan, about one hundred and fifty years ago, and for at least a century previous to that period."

― Jaq, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:44 (eighteen years ago)

"Over ten years ago I stumbled upon an incredible discovery - a clue hidden in an ancient map, which though it did not lead to buried treasure suggested that the history of the world as it has been known and handed down for centuries would have to be radically revised."

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:46 (eighteen years ago)

All this happened, more or less...

One of my favourite books ever, not only for it's content but because (as has been said by others elsewhere) it made me want to read more, at a time (for me anyway, back in my mid teens) when there was a whole load of other distractions.

― Ned Trifle II, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:49 (eighteen years ago)

'The text of this short book needs some explanation.'

thrills

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:49 (eighteen years ago)

Frogman Henry - good choice! Hume da man!

― ledge, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:50 (eighteen years ago)

I think you'll guess mine, TOGTQ (xp)

― Tom D., Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:51 (eighteen years ago)

"It is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my place behind this desk, and face this learned audience."

pretty dull, really

― bernard snowy, Thursday, 19 April 2007 13:55 (eighteen years ago)

slightly more interesting one I picked up at the bookstore and very nearly bought:

"'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'"

― bernard snowy, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:00 (eighteen years ago)

It's The Victorians by A N Wilson. It's quite good actually! Elegantly written and it's made me grin a lot more often than most history books, generally at the bits involving Gladstone, who Wilson is plainly exasperated by.

-- Groke, Thursday, April 19, 2007 1:35 PM (22 minutes ago)

Of course. I picked that up the bookshop the other day but bought the Alain De Bottom book on architecture which I quite wish I hadn't really as it's not really..er..rocking my world.

― Ned Trifle II, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:01 (eighteen years ago)

"'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'"

I saw this on display recently and found it hard to imagine the trouble it caused, not it itself, but the trouble it found itself in...you understand what i trying to say...

― Ned Trifle II, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:07 (eighteen years ago)

I was travelling alone, no destination in mind.

Sounds boring but actually very good!

― ENBB, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:09 (eighteen years ago)

"The whole thing began with a blunder on my part, an entirely innocent piece of clumsiness, a gaffe, as the French call it."

― Michael White, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:14 (eighteen years ago)

"In the early nineteen seventies, a British photo retoucher named Robert Stevens arrived in south Florida to take a job at the National Enquirer, which is published in Palm Beach County."

― kenan, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:15 (eighteen years ago)

Some of those books sound amazing. I wish I knew what they were. Except for Rener's. I can make a reasonable guess as to what it might be.

Yarr.

― rener, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:17 (eighteen years ago)

"Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees caligraphic."

― the sir weeze, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:44 (eighteen years ago)

'All day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths."

― gem, Thursday, 19 April 2007 15:04 (eighteen years ago)

"In the biggest, brownest muddiest river in Africa, two crocodiles lay with their heads just above the water"

― Mark C, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:17 (eighteen years ago)

My achievements are a matter of history. A record. I am the voice and conscience of civilized Europe. I am one of the great inventors of my age. I am a child of the century and as old as the century.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:21 (eighteen years ago)

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

― max, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:26 (eighteen years ago)

I love how you can google any of these and find out what the book is.

― kenan, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:27 (eighteen years ago)

Shakey Mo that's Moorcock isn't it? I read it when I was 14 or so but the "child of the century and as old as the century" has really stuck in my head ever since.

At 14 tbh I cared more about the fairly wild sex scenes.

― Groke, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:43 (eighteen years ago)

"They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face."

― wmlynch, Thursday, 19 April 2007 17:46 (eighteen years ago)

ledge, I am indeed reading Isolarion, and enjoying it very much. I like being shown things that I've seen a thousand times but never seen before, if that makes sense. There's something extra cool about travel books about places you've been.

― The Wayward Johnny B, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:17 (eighteen years ago)

haha yes it is Moorcock but the book came out last year. It's the conlusion of the Pyat quartet, which I have been eagerly awaiting for years...

I see someone's reading Finnegan's Wake (no googling necessary!)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:19 (eighteen years ago)

"I am unpacking my library".

― admrl, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:22 (eighteen years ago)

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