Meme for wellinghall

[purplecat]

wellinghall posted the first lines of ten books to his blog and then complained about how unsuccessful we were at guessing them.

I can safely say I can identify none of the books, though I got the feeling, accurately as it transpired, that I should recognise the Beaulieu one.

By way of recompense here are 10 first lines from not entirely randomly selected books to see if this game really is as difficult as we are telling wellinghall it is.

1. The sublimity connected with vastness, is familiar to every eye.

2. On Monday January the seventeenth early in the morning it began to snow.

3. I stood in the shadows of a deserted shop front across from The Blood and Brew Pub, trying not to be obvious as I tugged my black leather pants back up where they belonged.

4. The girl screamed once, only the once. -- Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin. Guessed by lukadreaming

5. Waterloo ended a long war, but there remained in England a home front on which many battles were to be fought.

6. Rising up into the air, they took to the sky and flew.

7. Simon Boulderstone, aged twenty, came to Egypt with the draft.

8. It was a place of ancient evil. -- The Five Doctors by Terrance Dicks. Guessed by hobnobs

9. The world is four thousand years old. -- Learning the World by Ken McLoed. Guessed by iriswildthyme

10. The burnished metal plate outside said 1453 ABC.

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I don't recognise any of those either, although number 8 sounds like a line from the trailer to a Hollywood blockbuster. You can imagine that bloke with the really deep voice saying it.

[purplecat]

I wonder when I'm allowed to make a reveal? Not until wellinghall has had chance to guess I suppose. I think you'll be amused when you see the answer to that on.

TBH, once you exclude books which mention a famous character in the first sentence you're not left with many that you can hand on heart say "Oh well, everybody will have read this one."

Only one of the above is so obscure I'd be surprised if anyone had read it though.

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

No. 4 is both the first and the last Rebus books -- Knots and Crosses and Exit Music by Ian Rankin.

No idea with any of the others, but then I suspect you read a lot more science fiction than I do *g*.

[purplecat]

It's the first. I've not read Exit Music (yet) so didn't realise it was reused. I make three of them crime fiction, actually, although one is that modern urban fantasy crime fiction genre, so I'm not sure how much it counts.

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

Yes, he re-uses it in the final book. No. 8 looks vaguely familiar, but nothing springs to mind. Sarah Rayne? Minette Walters? *g*.

[purplecat]

You're way off, I'm afraid. I very much doubt you'll have come across No. 8. The other straight up crime fiction one is number 10.

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

Doesn't look familiar *g*. Which probably means I've read it!

[purplecat]

I'll do an answers post in a couple of days. I'm not convinced I'd have recognised any of those lines myself and I have read all the books in question (except the first).

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

Only reason I recognised no. 4 was because I reviewed Exit Music not so long ago, and commented in the review that the first line was recycled *g*.

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

OK, I've just cheated and Googled it -- and I have flippin' read it! Wonder what happened to the author -- haven't seen anything from them in aeons.

[purplecat]

I read a couple of her books, tagline "In the bestselling tradition of Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky", on the grounds that I liked both Grafton and Paretsky (although the latter more than the former) but I seem to recall they didn't grab me much and I stopped buying them.

I don't think I've seem much from Grafton or Paretsky recently, although I no longer haunt bookshops they way I did when younger.

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

Grafton's up to about T. I can take them or leave them -- the fact she sets them in the 1980s means they got old quickly, literally and metaphorically.

Paretsky's latest book isn't crime fic -- it's looking at the state of America through a small town. I liked it.

[purplecat]

I think I've read Grafton up to about M (possibly P).

the fact she sets them in the 1980s means they got old quickly, literally and metaphorically.

I remember thinking it a bit of an odd choice when I first noticed that, although the books were appearing at 6 month - yearly intervals they were each set about 3 months apart. It makes Kinsey's life appear unbelievably eventful and makes them seem old-fashioned without, somehow, letting them ride on the nostalgia bandwagon. I would have thought that setting them each a year apart and following her from age 30 - 56 would have been a better choice - but I'm not a best-selling author, so what do I know?

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

*g*. My view as well. It's one of those things that probably sounded like a good idea at the time. But the series has gone on for so long that it now seems unnecessarily quaint -- no mobile phones, hardly any computers . . .

[fredbassett]

I'm stumped on the lot!

[munchkinofdoom.livejournal.com]

Me too!

[purplecat]

I happen to know you've read at least one of them.

It's really not that easy!

[fredbassett]

Nope, still stumped!

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I don't know any of them, although 8 sounds to me like the start of a Doctor Who Target novelization!

[hobnobs.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yes... The Five Doctors!

Knew I recognised it from somewhere. My brain was in Lovecraft Territory until I saw your comment!

[lonemagpie.livejournal.com]

Ah, I had just posted to guess at Stones Of Blood when I saw this...

[purplecat]

Well guessed!!

[hobnobs.livejournal.com]

Ta. Although you can really give the_ladylark the credit for reading the list out to me. (It piqued my interest and I came back to read it myself after I'd finished what I was doing.)

I vaguely recognised maybe 2 others, but I can't place them. The one about snow is probably a disaster story. And given the fact it started snowing it'll be about someone lost in a snowstorm, or an avalanche or something. (I've not read too many distaster novels, as I prefer to read non-fiction (sic) accounts.)

[purplecat]

I found that with wellinghall's - a couple I sort of thought I ought to be able to place.

You're quite close with the snow one, although its a children's book so fairly gentle for a disaster story.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

(belated catching up) oooh, is it "Avalanche!" That's the only children's disaster novel about snow I know, but it did make quite an impression when I read it in middle school.

[purplecat]

It is indeed, well-spotted!

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I sort of recognise a number of them, but if you expect me to remember exactly which book of the thousands I have read over 50 odd years that sort-of springs from....

[purplecat]

I think we are, indeed, proving this is a difficult game...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Nope, don't recognise any of them (and Google confirms that I haven't read any of them). Point taken ... ;-)

[purplecat]

I'm quite surprised you've not read any of them, although I did steer clear of any Tolkien stuff and only included one inspired by celtic mythology.

I'll post the answer later today.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I have found before that (as this pair of posts demonstrates!) my reading is often quite different from other people's, even thos with broadly similar tastes.

[iriswildthyme.livejournal.com]

9. The world is four thousand years old

Taht's one of Ken McLeod's books - 'Learning the World' maybe?

[purplecat]

Spot on!