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Forum games - First lines

This game is very simple: you try to guess what book the given first lines are from. The one to guess the correct book first will be the next to post their own, which everyone else will then try to guess, and so on. If it seems like no one gets it right, you can give additional hints.

I'll start with a modern classic:
When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right-angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh.

Start guessing, folks! :)

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jaume on September 5, 2009 at 8:46am

Hint #2: the author was an English clergyman who related, in another book, his journey across France and Italy.

Permalink Reply by Jaume on September 14, 2009 at 12:34pm

'It was the dogs' fault... that sounds familiar but I can't put a name on it. Virginia Woolf?

Permalink Reply by Jaume on September 17, 2009 at 10:59am

I don't want to google it yet ;-) - I'm pretty sure I've seen lines like those (although probably in translation). Maybe a tip about the book's context would help.

Permalink Reply by Jaume on September 18, 2009 at 4:40am

I know that porphyria is sometimes associated with vampires in horror fiction, a genre I'm unfamiliar with, except for Mary Shelley, Lovecraft and a tiny bit of their imitators. Is that what you mean - a vampire story?

Permalink Reply by Jaume on September 27, 2009 at 9:25am

I'll let it for someone else to guess. I eventually enlisted Google to help, only to realize I was mistaken - I've never read anything from this author.

Permalink Reply by Jaume on October 1, 2009 at 6:55am

Gont? *click*

Ursula Le Guin - Earthsea series, first book (don't know the exact title since I read the French translation - probably The Wizard/Sorceror/whatever of Earthsea)

Permalink Reply by Jaume on October 1, 2009 at 11:57am

This is the first paragraph of a famous book, although it's far more heard about than read. I've removed part of the punctuation (will restore it later as a hint if needed) --

"The world is all that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things. The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case. The facts in logical space are the world. The world divides into facts. Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same."