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Post by Pete on Aug 18, 2008 1:17:29 GMT
"It was the day my grandmother exploded." Iain Banks, The Crow Road
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Post by Vadim on Aug 18, 2008 8:16:13 GMT
"It was the day my grandmother exploded." Iain Banks, The Crow RoadIs that Pete, or coconutpete? ;D Do you recommend this book, Pete? I've read "Song of Stone" (a long time ago) and enjoyed that ('twas a present).
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Post by Pete on Aug 18, 2008 9:36:09 GMT
"It was the day my grandmother exploded." Iain Banks, The Crow RoadIs that Pete, or coconutpete? ;D Do you recommend this book, Pete? I've read "Song of Stone" (a long time ago) and enjoyed that ('twas a present). I have read everything he has written, science fiction (as Iain M Banks) and 'normal' fiction, and I have enjoyeds them all immensely. My favourite is Espedair Street.
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Post by Dave on Aug 18, 2008 9:48:40 GMT
The "opening line" contest:
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Post by Pete on Aug 18, 2008 9:51:50 GMT
I liked this one particularly: ""Die, commie pigs!" grunted Sergeant "Rocky" Steele through his cigar stub as he machine-gunned the North Korean farm animals."
It reminds me of the old joke: Is Karl Marx's tomb a communist plot?
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Post by Gabriel-Ernest on Aug 19, 2008 11:27:34 GMT
James Cushat-Prinkly was a young man who had always had a settled conviction that one of these days he would marry; up to the age of thirty-four he had done nothing to justify that conviction. He liked and admired a great many women collectively and dispassionately without singling out one for especial matrimonial consideration, just as one might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak as one’s own private property. Tea by Saki [H. H. Munro]
G-E.
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Post by Gabriel-Ernest on Aug 19, 2008 12:10:30 GMT
And how about closing lines?
To leave a story un-resolved and ambiguous this takes some beating. (The ‘he’ refers to the monster.)
He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
G-E.
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Post by Paul Doherty on Aug 19, 2008 12:54:51 GMT
Reader, I married him? Not quite the last words, of course.
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Post by amanda on Aug 19, 2008 17:00:09 GMT
Imagine my horror when, having devoured 705 pages of "Wives and Daughters", I turned the last page and read: "Here the story is broken off, and it can never be finished. What promised to be the crowning work of a life is a memorial of death..."Yep, Mrs. Gaskell had popped her clogs at that point. I nearly ate the book in frustration!
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Post by Vadim on Aug 20, 2008 12:12:56 GMT
Speaking of endings, I've just finished a Ben Elton book (don't slay me, I'm trying!) entitled "Blind Faith". I couldn't put the book down, but upon reading the ending, I wanted to throw myself off a bridge!
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Post by Dave on Aug 20, 2008 14:37:33 GMT
of a bridge! Is the off missing or misspelled?
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Post by Pete on Aug 20, 2008 16:04:03 GMT
of a bridge! Is the off missing or misspelled? I had assumed misspelled.
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Post by Barry on Aug 20, 2008 22:16:16 GMT
Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers begins:
"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."
I have made it my life's ambition to be able to repeat the lines in reality!
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Post by Vadim on Aug 21, 2008 9:55:59 GMT
of a bridge! Is the off missing or misspelled? Sorry, Dave - corrected now . Nice "Spam" by the way
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 21, 2008 13:27:34 GMT
The opening line of a chapter, not the book:
"A flock of ducks alarmed the dawn with the clatter of their wings [...] ." Spurling, Betty (2005). Over the Mountains. p. 79
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