The Next Best Book Club discussion
Fun and Games
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Opening Lines
I shall give you guys a clue. The book you are looking of the fantasy genre.
Death On Demand by Carolyn G. Hart"At eight o'clock in the evening, the Baltimore airport was nearly deserted."
Digging to America by Anne TylerYou don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn."Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die."
Fight Club by Chuck PalahniukSomeone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
Murphy by Samuel Beckett"Mom is still alive, but she is going to be murdered at midnight on Good Friday", Amanda Martin told the deputy chief, who didn't even think to question the girl; she already proved she knew more than he and all his colleagues in Homicide put together."
Ripper by Isabel AllendeIf 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, if you want to know the truth.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon"We drove past Tiny Polski's mansion house to the main road, and then the five miles into Northampton, Father talking the whole way about savages and the awfulness of America--how it got turned into a dope-taking, door-locking, ulcerated danger zone of rabid scavengers and criminal millionaires and moral sneaks."
The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux"In a small clearing, an intricate device of glass and metal tubes scanned the night skies."
Agatha H and the Airship City by Phil FoglioOnce 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.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce"Daddy, I'm tired," the little girl in the red pants and the green blouse said fretfully.
Firestarter by Stephen King"If you have never driven over country roads it is useless for me to tell you about it; you wouldn’t understand anyway."
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford"The cry was low and tortured, pulled from the gut of a man who'd been to hell and back."
The Broken by Shelley CoriellI wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence SterneFloating upward through a confusion of dreams and memory, curving like a trout through the rings of previous risings, I surface.
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner"Here is something I learned when I was eleven years old: Pain has a flavor. The question is, what does it taste like to you?"
Murder on the House by Juliet BlackwellWhether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
David Copperfield by Charles DickensWe spent days along the Wawanash River, helping Uncle Benny fish.
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis"The plump brandy glasses reflected the candles burning in the silver candelabra."
The Sentinel by Jeremy BishopStately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
Ulysses by James JoyceThe Music-Room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet.
Bel Canto by Ann PatchettPeople do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.
True Grit by Charles PortisIt was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton"It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time."
Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas MaloryThe old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum.
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth SteinOne 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.
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas PynchonI had just begun to peel the potatoes for dinner when my oldest sister Bessie came in, her eyes far away and very tired.
Bread Givers byAnzia Yezierska"Like most people who own their own businesses, I work long hours that start early in the morning."
Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs"If I hear a person say, "Man! That's a blue sky - for sure," I know exactly how the sky looks."
A Patch of Blue by Elizabeth KataIt was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
I don't want to wear red pants!!! As a first grader,first impressions are everything when trying to make new friends."
Claire wrote: "A Patch of Blue by Elizabeth KataIt was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end askin..."
City of Glass by Paul Auster
Not sure if I get to post a line since Amanda below you did. :)
Go ahead and give us a line, Kandice!
"The angel was cleaning out his closet when the call came."
The Next Best Book Club
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When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father's estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton's child.