what's the first sentence of the book you're reading? (do not read if you hate winkle-pickers)

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"in 1967, aged four, I spied a pair of winkle-pickers on a fellow bus-passenger."

http://www.tokyoclassified.com/.../345/pics/feature10.jpg

― dakatin, Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Having just finished it:

"This is the story of a dinner party."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:04 (twenty-three years ago)

http://www.tokyoclassified.com/tokyofeaturestoriesarchive349/345/pics/feature10.jpg

― dakatin, Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:07 (twenty-three years ago)

"In the beginning was the word - surely one of the most magically resonant place-names in all history."

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:11 (twenty-three years ago)

"More than once during the chaotic week before the opening, Alan Solomon, the United States Commissioner for the Venice Biennale, had the distinct impression that too many people were trying in too many languages to tell him what to do."

― jones (actual), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:20 (twenty-three years ago)

"Zeke's probably got the only dog in the world that can walk sideway," Ned remarked to Tuxie Miller as they sat astride their horses, watching the cautious Zeke Proctor and his short, fat, black dog, Pete, sidestepping along in front of the dry goods store.

(from Zeke and Ned by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana - I had pointed out previously that one of the two leads was named after an ILXer; as you can see above, there is another character also named after one of our leading members.)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:21 (twenty-three years ago)

'I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892.'

― David (David), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:23 (twenty-three years ago)

"I could hear them out in the kitchen." (A collection of short stories by the same author)

― Aaron A., Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:25 (twenty-three years ago)

"Essay 1, 'Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages', was read at the 1964 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem."

oh wait, that's not the real beginning.

"What is it for words to mean what they do?"

wait, that's the introduction.

"Philosophers are fond of making claims concerning the properties a language must have if it is to be, even in principle, learnable."

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:32 (twenty-three years ago)

"It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him..."

― jel -- (jel), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:36 (twenty-three years ago)

The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194-, at Oran.

― jamesmichaelward (jamesmichaelward), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:37 (twenty-three years ago)

"One grey morning the first snow began to fall in the Valley of the Moomins"

― jel -- (jel), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:42 (twenty-three years ago)

"Aragorn sped on up the hill."

― Stuart, Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:48 (twenty-three years ago)

I can't remember the first sentence of the book I'm reading (it's out in the car), but whoever wrote that thing about Kristiania, I totally agree.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 21:52 (twenty-three years ago)

"Deciding to study neuroanatomy is somewhat like agreeing to paint a large mural that you will spend the rest of your life carefully improving and refining."

― doctor love hewitt (doctor love hewitt), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 22:03 (twenty-three years ago)

"It is said that a man's best friend is his dog, but those of us who read fairy tales know better."

This is chapter one, not the introduction.

― Maria (Maria), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 22:24 (twenty-three years ago)

nickaliciois it was Knut Hamsun in Hunger.

― jel -- (jel), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 22:27 (twenty-three years ago)

"rivverrun, 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."

I'm 19 pages away from finishing!

― Leee (Leee), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 22:30 (twenty-three years ago)

"Affinity towards string quartets, small jazz groups, dinner parties of no more than six people - distaste for symphonies, big bands, large parties - in this state I find myself: a committed chamber musician, unhappy in all crowds."

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 22:37 (twenty-three years ago)

"In recent years there has been considerable speculation about the causes of the American Revolution, but less, perhaps, about its essential characteristics"

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 22:37 (twenty-three years ago)

"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book."

― C J (C J), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 22:49 (twenty-three years ago)

"In the autumn of 1816, John Melmoth, a student in Trinity College, Dublin, quitted it to attend a dying uncle on whom his hopes for independence chiefly rested."

― philip (philip), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 22:57 (twenty-three years ago)

"it began as a mistake"

― donna (donna), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 23:40 (twenty-three years ago)

"The front page of a nineteenth-century copy of The Times is a printed rebuttal to the received image of Victorian entertainment."

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 27 November 2002 23:51 (twenty-three years ago)

he arrived in the village as a twelve-year old boy, from the direction of the open field, so that the river was on his left and the forest on his right, and before entering the village he walked through the unfenced graveyard along a pathway strewn with river sand, and his bare feet, insensitive to the sharp stones and broken glass, sensed the perennial chill of the earth.

― gareth (gareth), Thursday, 28 November 2002 00:21 (twenty-three years ago)

I inherited the house from my father

― RickyT (RickyT), Thursday, 28 November 2002 00:23 (twenty-three years ago)

"My godmother lived in a handsome house in the clean and ancient town of Bretton."

― Douglas, Thursday, 28 November 2002 00:27 (twenty-three years ago)

"I am a citizen in the United States of America"

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 28 November 2002 00:45 (twenty-three years ago)

"It doesn't seem right somehow, seeing that kid run across the football pitch with his head sprayed gold, turned into a robot, knowing he has to get home and scrape the paint off before his brain boils and head explodes."

― Poppy (poppy), Thursday, 28 November 2002 01:20 (twenty-three years ago)

"I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods."

― Ally (mlescaut), Thursday, 28 November 2002 01:22 (twenty-three years ago)

"One morning Gregorio awoke to discover he'd become a giant penis"

― Queen G (Queeng), Thursday, 28 November 2002 01:42 (twenty-three years ago)

"the bottoms" succeeded to "hell row"

― robin (robin), Thursday, 28 November 2002 01:59 (twenty-three years ago)

"Wadi Al-Uyoun: An outpouring of green amid the harsh, obdurate desert, as if it had burst from within the earth or fallen from the sky."

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 28 November 2002 02:18 (twenty-three years ago)

"In a day in June, at the hour when London moves abroad in quest of lunch, a young man stood at the entrance of the Bandolero Restaurant looking earnestly up Shaftesbury Avenue -- a large young man in excellent condition, with a pleasant, good-humoured, brown, clean-cut face."

― j.lu (j.lu), Thursday, 28 November 2002 02:45 (twenty-three years ago)

"Waking this morning out of my sleep on a sudden, I did with my elbow hit my wife a great blow over her face and nose, which waked her with pain, at which I was sorry, and to sleep again."

― Arthur (Arthur), Thursday, 28 November 2002 03:53 (twenty-three years ago)

"Call me Ishmael."

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Thursday, 28 November 2002 03:59 (twenty-three years ago)

"Ich hatte einen Affen." er sagt.

― B, Thursday, 28 November 2002 04:41 (twenty-three years ago)

"These last few days I have thought and thought of the Nordland summer's endless day."

― spectra, Thursday, 28 November 2002 05:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Also "President Henault, remarking on royal surnames of honor how difficult it often is to ascertain not only why, but even when, they were conferred, takes occasion, in his sleek official way, to make a philosophical reflection."

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 28 November 2002 05:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Ce n'est point un vain dèsir de gloire historique qui me met la plume á la main.

― daria g, Thursday, 28 November 2002 05:46 (twenty-three years ago)

aie ! silly html special characters. let's try again:

Ce n'est point un vain désir de gloire historique qui me met la plume à la main.

― daria g, Thursday, 28 November 2002 05:48 (twenty-three years ago)

"We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason."

― Dan I., Thursday, 28 November 2002 05:52 (twenty-three years ago)

"I picked up my red chenille suit, wig, and beard at one P.M. on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving."

― maura (maura), Thursday, 28 November 2002 06:12 (twenty-three years ago)

"It was the fattest butt in the land."

― Mike Hanle y (mike), Thursday, 28 November 2002 06:17 (twenty-three years ago)

KING
So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 28 November 2002 06:21 (twenty-three years ago)

polyphonic-what is that book like?
a friend of mine mentioned it recently,just as he was starting it,and it sounded intriuging,(he said "the whole book is a conversation between a man and a telepathic monkey",or something)and i forgot to ask him about it since,but someone told me the other day that he's read it several times since...

― robin (robin), Thursday, 28 November 2002 06:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Maura.....what book is that? I think I've read that.....or have I?

― B, Thursday, 28 November 2002 06:25 (twenty-three years ago)

"My friends were decent people, and I was raised, like my friends, to believe that Police were our friends and protectors--the Badge was a symbol of extremely high authority, perhaps the highest of all."

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 28 November 2002 08:18 (twenty-three years ago)

rrrrr--that's "My parents," not "My friends."

― M Matos (M Matos), Thursday, 28 November 2002 08:18 (twenty-three years ago)

A man who no longer called himself Callum came to Aberdeen intent on ending on his life.

--69 Things to do with a Dead Princess, Stewart Home

― Mary (Mary), Thursday, 28 November 2002 09:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Skipping 138 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

You don't know... I might have a steel pants fetish!

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 8 September 2003 05:57 (twenty-two years ago)

"The Mississippi is well worth reading about."

― thom west (thom w), Tuesday, 9 September 2003 00:51 (twenty-two years ago)

We were in Ancoats, a district just north of Manchester city centre, looking for evidence of ruin and industrial decay.

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 22 September 2003 18:16 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll begin with babbling and doodling.

― cybele (cybele), Monday, 22 September 2003 19:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Modern European and American history is centered around the effort to gain freedom from the economic, political, and spiritual shackles that have bound men.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 22 September 2003 19:28 (twenty-two years ago)

This book is the first devoted to the work of Peter Saville.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 22 September 2003 19:31 (twenty-two years ago)

"The reader must begin this book with an act of faith and end it with an act of charity."

(first to guess the book
wins a custom-made haiku
courtesy of me)

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Monday, 22 September 2003 20:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Monday, 22 September 2003 20:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Jack says hi, btw.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Monday, 22 September 2003 20:08 (twenty-two years ago)

damn that was too quick
I will try but your huge name
screws syllable counts:

1498:
I can't smell spring anymore;
oh that too-cruel rope!

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Monday, 22 September 2003 20:37 (twenty-two years ago)

"The eighty-odd years between 1843, when a new, indigenous style of music-making first came to the attention of the American general public, and the early 1920s, when its full spectrum--black and white, urban and rural, sopisticated as silk lingerie and crude as cotton overalls--finally made it on record for all to hear, are the caveman period of American music."

― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, 22 September 2003 20:46 (twenty-two years ago)

This book is the first devoted to the work of Peter Saville.

Ya lucky duck. Is it as brilliant as I would hope it is?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 22 September 2003 20:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I very highly recommend it. It is utterly fantastic and a complete inspiration. I regret not flying out for the show...

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 22 September 2003 21:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Why do heterosexual women have sex with men?

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Monday, 22 September 2003 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Hoy, mamá ha muerto.

― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Monday, 22 September 2003 22:29 (twenty-two years ago)

My cover-to-cover reading has dropped like a stone :/ I'm on the same book I was on a couple weeks ago, which opens with:

"It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties."

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 22 September 2003 22:32 (twenty-two years ago)

this week i am reading three books:

'towards three o'clock of an afternoon in the month of october, in the year 1844, a man about sixty years of age, though most persons would have thought him older, was passing along the boulevard italiens, his nose to the scent, his lips hypocritical, like a merchant who has just concluded a sharp bergain, or a young man who comes out of a boudoir well satisfied with himself.'

and

'it was conscious of a luminous and infinite haze, as if it were floating, godlike, alpha and omega, over a sea of vapor and looking down; then less happily after an interval of obscure duration, of murmured sounds and peripheral shadows, which reduced the impression of boundless space and empire to something much more contracted and unaccomodating.'

and

'at the little town of vevey, in switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel.'

none of them are particularly good first sentences!! some of these are very good though i dont know any of the last few, i wonder if anyone knows mine!!

― trife (simon_tr), Tuesday, 23 September 2003 00:35 (twenty-two years ago)

When one looks south from Granada across the red towers of the Alhambra one sees a range of mountains known as the Sierra Nevada which have snow on them all the year round.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 23 September 2003 00:41 (twenty-two years ago)

god that middle one makes it look like im reading bad sci fi or something... heres some more recent ones

"'whats your first memory?' someone would ask. and she would reply 'i dont remember'"

'the bottoms succeeded to 'hell row'. hell row was a block of thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on greenhill lane'

'CLOV (fixed gaze, tonelessly): finished, its finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. (pause.) grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, theres a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. (pause.) i cant be punished anymore.'

'this morning i got a note from my aunt telling me to come to lunch. i know what this means'

and, as always

'i am going to call my autobiography 'the fermata', even though 'fermata' is only one of the many names i have for the fold. 'fold' is, obviously, another.'

these are a lot easier than my current ones!!

― trife (simon_tr), Tuesday, 23 September 2003 00:44 (twenty-two years ago)

a lot of mine seem so unsatisfying!! i really dont like naturist descriptive first sentences, i like them to be idealogy or dialogue or some gripping plot element, not 'the house sat on a hill next to a winding creek' etc etc etc

― trife (simon_tr), Tuesday, 23 September 2003 00:45 (twenty-two years ago)

did you like The Moviegoer, trife?

― hstencil, Tuesday, 23 September 2003 00:46 (twenty-two years ago)

'The other night I had a dream that I was sitting on the sidewalk on Moody Street, Pawktucketville, Lowell, Mass., with a pencil and paper in my hand saying to myself "Describe the wrinkly tar of this sidewalk, also the iron pickets of Textile Institute, or the doorway where Lousy and you and G.J.'s always sittin and dont stop to think of words when you do stop, just stop to think of the picture better - and let your mind off yourself in this work"'

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 23 September 2003 08:03 (twenty-two years ago)

'That the number of our members be unlimited'

― Ricardo (RickyT), Tuesday, 23 September 2003 08:09 (twenty-two years ago)

"I believe that what separates humanity from everything else in this world - spaghetti, binder paper, deep-sea creatures, edelweiss and Mount McKinley - is that humanity alone has the capacity at any given moment to commit all possible sins."

― Hanna (Hanna), Tuesday, 23 September 2003 10:59 (twenty-two years ago)

'it was twenty years ago today so sang the *other* fab four
but the analogy datewise is hard to ignore'.

― piscesboy, Tuesday, 23 September 2003 11:37 (twenty-two years ago)

'The story of Ireland has often been written as a morality tale...'

I have 'finished' it today.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 23 September 2003 15:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Don't tell me how it ends!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 23 September 2003 15:57 (twenty-two years ago)

"All roads lead to Jimi Hendrix."
-- Greg Tate, Midnight LIghtning, p.1

I've only just begun reading it.

(And for Andrew F, in case he would(n't) want to know - this book ends on p.152, with the line "because they'd all have pretty distinct personalities" ;)

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Saturday, 27 September 2003 21:45 (twenty-two years ago)

"Just beyond the narrow passage separating two mesas where Otowi Bridge spans the Rio Grande, New Mexico State Road 502, one of the most spectacular highways in the country, begins its steep ascent up Pajarito Plateau, home of Los Alamos National Laboratory."
-- A Passage Through Time: The Path to the Quantum Computer, by George Johnson.

"Adolph Gouda: Loyal and hard-working Newsteam 17 cameraman who accompanies Sally Vaccuum on field assignments."
-- The Tick: Circus Maximus Redux

― Lord Custos Omicron (Lord Custos Omicron), Saturday, 27 September 2003 21:54 (twenty-two years ago)

i hardly recognise any of these,other than cannery row (trife) and beckett,endgame i think (also trife)
what the hell is dave q's?
"Irreversible drug-induced brain damage is not necessarily the 'life sentence' it may seem!"

-- dave q (scrape10...), March 19th, 2003.

i love this thread,i wish people would post the names of the books though...

― robin (robin), Saturday, 27 September 2003 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)

"to begin,the art of jigsaw puzzles seems of little substance,easily exhausted,wholly dealt with by a basic introduction to gestalt:the perceived object-we may be dealing with a perceptual act,the acquisition of a skill,a physiological system,or as in the present case,a wooden jigsaw puzzle-"fuck that,that's only about a third of the sentence but i'm not arsed with the rest
its from life:a user's manual by georges perec,which i am really enjoying...

― robin (robin), Saturday, 27 September 2003 22:39 (twenty-two years ago)

actually that's from the "preamble"
the first sentence proper is
"Yes,it could begin this way,right here,just like that,in a rather slow and ponderous way,in this neutral place that belongs to all and to none,where people pass by almost without seeing each other,where the life of the building regularly and distantly sounds"

― robin (robin), Saturday, 27 September 2003 22:41 (twenty-two years ago)

(correction of mistakes: Midnight Lightning ends on page 157, tho. as i notice, having finished reading it today)

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Sunday, 28 September 2003 11:03 (twenty-two years ago)

'A screaming comes across the sky'

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 28 September 2003 11:29 (twenty-two years ago)

two of them: "Like a match struck in a darkened room: "

and

"In July 1966, Disc and Music Echo magazine invited Ray Davies to review Revolver, the new album by the Beatles."

― M Matos (M Matos), Sunday, 28 September 2003 20:43 (twenty-two years ago)

first from Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, second from Andy Miller's 33 1/3: The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society

― M Matos (M Matos), Sunday, 28 September 2003 20:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Manchester Pop City -- David Halsam

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 29 September 2003 02:29 (twenty-two years ago)

five years pass...

I'm sure this has been done but search didn't turn up. New decade (close, probably), new thread.

Page 21, sentence 11.

"Her daemon changed yet again, and became a goldfinch, pecking at invisible crumbs on the tabletop."

― Bella Swan Song (Susan), Friday, 21 November 2008 15:13 (seventeen years ago)

Well the "are you sure?" search found something but posted the post I was going to make on my new thread. Looks dumb now. I revived it b/c of the note going around on FB right now and b/c it's Friday and I'm slacking horrible.

Page 21, sentence 11!

― Bella Swan Song (Susan), Friday, 21 November 2008 15:15 (seventeen years ago)

"Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered."

- The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

― Law-Thug for Chiquita Bananas (Pancakes Hackman), Friday, 21 November 2008 15:19 (seventeen years ago)

Ol' Winkle Picks

― I've encountered Whiney on numerous message boards and (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 21 November 2008 15:46 (seventeen years ago)

First sentence of Introduction:
All summer long Grandpa remains in the basement, two pounds of cremated ash in a plain cardboard cylinder.

First sentence of Chapter 1:
During the last month of the driest winter in a hundred years, I go to the wettest spot in continental America, looking for truth from the sky and the sea.

― gabbneb, Friday, 21 November 2008 15:50 (seventeen years ago)

"He was struggling in every direction, he was the centre of the writhing and kicking knot of his own body."

― What a broad smile! It is like a delta! (Marcello Carlin), Friday, 21 November 2008 15:50 (seventeen years ago)

(different book)

Prologue:
The premise of this book is that human beings need to organize the inchoate sensations amid which we pass our days--pain, desire, pleasure, fear--into a story.

― gabbneb, Friday, 21 November 2008 15:56 (seventeen years ago)

Chapter 1:
Let me begin by proposing to do something that the historian Alan Taylor has recently described as "quaint."

― gabbneb, Friday, 21 November 2008 15:57 (seventeen years ago)

"I go to the basement and open my ruck."

― Ismael Klata, Friday, 21 November 2008 16:05 (seventeen years ago)

"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 of an empty auditorium."

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 21 November 2008 16:22 (seventeen years ago)

On the southern coast of Turkey, in the middle of the fifth century A.D., a Christian priest of the shrine of Saint Thecla at Seleucia (now Meryemlik, near Silifke) decided to write an improved version of the legend of the virgin saint.

― Euler, Friday, 21 November 2008 16:28 (seventeen years ago)

"It is two months since the death of my second mother, the only friend and protectrss I ever had."

― President Keyes, Friday, 21 November 2008 16:57 (seventeen years ago)

protectress

― President Keyes, Friday, 21 November 2008 16:58 (seventeen years ago)

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