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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

My Top 10 for Day 10 #SOLC15 - 3/10

I couldn't think of what I wanted to write about, so I am doing a little "book blind date" as a tip of the hat to the authors that make me want to be a better writer (thanks, pinterest).  The following are the first lines of my "top 10" books of right now.  I say "right now" only because I have no idea what the ultimate 10 would be.  If you're looking for a new book and you think the first line is intriguing, or you just want to test your book knowledge, the book that owns the line is linked to each quote.  So, in no particular order, I give you...

1. "I don't have to look up to know Mom is making another surprise visit."

2. "It was an old familiar nightmare, the one about men in black hoods chasing him through tall grass toward the precipice overlooking jagged rocks and great greenish waves rolling and crashing in the abyss where sharks with chainsaw teeth awaited and great black buzzards hung in the air and there he was sliding toward extinction and then Mr. Sparrow woke up to a song emanating from somewhere close to the bed."

Bonus!: "Mr. Sparrow wished that the mice would carry Clara away and lock her in a dungeon and that the Hallelujah Chorus could be embargoed for ten years and that Tiny Tim would learn a useful trade and quit blessing people."

3. "The circus arrives without warning.  No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtoan posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers.  it is simply there, when yesterday it was not."

Bonus!: "Stories have changed my dear boy... There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue.  Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case."

4. "I'd never given much thought to how I would die - though I'd had reason enough in the last few months - but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this." (Yes. I love this book.)

5. "I don't remember a time when I wasn't chubby."

6. "It was little more than three miles from the Old Kingdom, but that was enough."

7. "It was a nice day.  All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet."

8. "Elspeth died while Robert was standing in front of a vending machine watching tea shoot into a small plastic cup."  (From the Author of "The Time Traveller's Wife")

9. "Take care to chop the onion fine. To keep from crying when you chop it (which is so annoying!), I suggest you place a little bit on your head."

10. "At dusk they pour from the sky.  They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles."

This is, by no means, a complete list of all things wonderful in my personal library.  Just some good books.  I often wish my life was more like the books I read.  "The Night Circus", for example, is so beautiful, magical, and deeply pleasing, it makes me sad to leave that world and return to the world of grading papers and doing chores.


1 comment:

  1. This is a great idea for a slice--a little glimpse into your library of favorite books as of right now. I think my top 10 list would probably change day by day. It's always interesting to me to look back at old blog posts with book lists because if I were making the list now, it would be totally different.

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