(no subject)

[moonwise]

The book meme that's been going around, ganked from andmydog among others

The rules:
1. Choose five to ten of your all time favorite books (I'm including plays in this one).
2. Take the first sentence of the first chapter and make a list in your journal.
3. Don't reveal the author or the title of the book.

If you guess the book and want to know, I'll tell you why it's on my list of favorites. (Some of my favorites are a bit obscure, I have to warn you; I'm a fantasy h0)



1. She scowled at her glass of orange juice. The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley

2. Lest anyone suppose that I am a cuckoo's child, got on the wrong side of the blanket by lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court, for all the good it did me. Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey

3. Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

4. When one of the serfs was caught with a bundle of seditious pamphlets in his pocket, the Marquis vo Derrivalle was understandably infuriated. Illusion, Paula Volsky

5. I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the four corners of the world. Bridge of Birds, Barry Hughart

6. The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

7. The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years--if it ever did end--began, so far as I can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. IT, Stephen King

8. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under the conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

9. The Prince had all his life known the story of Sleeping Beauty, cursed to sleep for a hundred years, with her parents, the King and Queen, and all of the Court, after pricking her finger on a spindle. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, A. N. Roquelaure

10. I grew up with my mother in Chez Stratos, my mother's house in the clouds. The Silver Metal Lover, Tanith Lee

(note: this list is limited to books I have handy; most of my books are up in the attic due to space constraints.)

Comments

[octopedingenue]

10 is The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee, and is one of my favorites as well. I have the last two paragraphs of the book memorized.

[octopedingenue]

And I would quibble that the first sentence of the book is actually "Mother, I am in love with a robot", but that probably would have given the game away too easily. :D

[arafel.livejournal.com]

Heh, I got the first page from the back end of Metallic Love, since my copy of Silver Metal Lover isn't handy. Did you read the sequel? If you did, what did you think of it?

Metallic Love

[octopedingenue]

I did read the sequel, and I was underwhelmed. I felt the book spent too much effort trying to convince me to love its two main characters because they were so! much! not! like! Jane and Silver! without giving me many actual reasons why I should give a damn about them. I wanted to shake Verlis. A lot. And the ending with the reinarnation-revelation was a muddled mess. I got to that part, went "ooh, it's finally getting interesting" and turned the page--and discovered that instead of the 50 pages of story I thought were left, it was the end of the book and they'd tacked on the first chapter of Silver Metal Lover as a teaser. I threw the book across the room.

I did love the conceit of The Silver Metal Lover becoming part of the text both through quotes and through the narrator's (whose name escapes me) love for the book; I'm probably going to steal that idea for my own writing someday.

Re: Metallic Love

[arafel.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree with you re: Metallic Love. It was a sequel that didn't need to be written, and I expected more out of Tanith Lee, who is such a talented writer. She doesn't swing and miss too often. It took some of the magic out of The Silver Metal Lover, IMO. I agree that the end was a muddled mess, and I freely admit I didn't understand it all that well.

Having "Jane's Book" be part of the book just struck me as somewhat conceited - it made Metallic Love feel like it was a rehash of Silver Metal Lover, yet (as you say) the book's constantly reiterating "this story is totallie NOT Silver Metal Lover! Look how different Verlis and Loren are from Silver and Jane!" Well, shoot me, because I liked Jane and Silver a lot better.