# Identify the books from the opening lines **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 20, 2005, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695 "2005-01-20T08:17:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/81 "2005-01-21T16:03:13Z")
> [@zev\_steinhardt](#): > > Z13: (warning - non fiction!) Maybe you never wondered about things like this. But _I_ did, which is how I got to be such a Darn Smart Guy. Errmm . . . _The Straight Dope_ by Cecil Adams? ---
**Author:** ![Sgt.Pepper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@Sgt.Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sgt.Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/82 "2005-01-21T16:06:16Z")
> [@](#): > > Ah1: Mr. Utterson, the lawyer, was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow loveable. This one is Robert Louis Stevenson, **Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde**. I’ll offer up some myself when I have the time. ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/83 "2005-01-21T16:07:13Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Errmm . . . _The Straight Dope_ by Cecil Adams? No, but not a bad guess (and not too far from the truth either…) Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![Aholibah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Aholibah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aholibah)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/84 "2005-01-21T16:22:09Z")
> [@Sgt.Pepper](#): > > This one is Robert Louis Stevenson, **Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde**. Got it! ---
**Author:** ![Aholibah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Aholibah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aholibah)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/85 "2005-01-21T16:23:50Z")
> [@Mr. Babbington](#): > > Off the top of my head (warning-translation) Is this Faulkner’s _As I Lay Dying_? ---
**Author:** ![Martha\_Medea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Martha\_Medea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martha_Medea)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/86 "2005-01-21T16:25:27Z")
> [@Mr. Babbington](#): > > Off the top of my head (warning-translation) > Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. I don’t know. The Stranger by Albert Camus ---
**Author:** ![Martha\_Medea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Martha\_Medea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martha_Medea)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/87 "2005-01-21T16:29:04Z")
:smack: it is of course The Outsider (French: L’Etranger). ---
**Author:** ![Sgt.Pepper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@Sgt.Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sgt.Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/88 "2005-01-21T16:33:07Z")
Ok, I’ll offer up some. The first two are fairly easy. sp1: ‘What’s is going to be then, eh?’ sp2: Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of [city]. sp3: My Father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of Five Sons. He sent me to Emanuel-Colledge in Cambridge, at Fourteen Years old, where I resided three Years, and applyed my self close to my Studies:… sp4: This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast. ---
**Author:** ![Sgt.Pepper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@Sgt.Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sgt.Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/89 "2005-01-21T16:35:24Z")
Poop, the only one I didn’t proof read. sp1 should be: ‘What’s **it** going to be then, eh?’ ---
**Author:** ![Shade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2bfe46/32.png) [@Shade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shade)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/90 "2005-01-21T16:35:51Z")
Z11: John Grisham. The one about the jury in a tobbaco trial. “The Runaway Jury”? ---
**Author:** ![hildea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ebca7d/32.png) [@hildea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hildea)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/91 "2005-01-21T16:43:21Z")
Pal1: “There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says. We must blame ourselves for misinterpreting them. One-Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight.” I know I’ve read this one… Could it be the first book about the Black Company, about a mercenary company in an ancient Rome-ish fantasy setting? I’ve no idea what the author or title of the book is. PM4 - “Mr [name] lived in 1872 at No 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814.” I looked at this one yesterday, when I was thinking about a contribution to this thread 🙂 [name] = Phileas Fogg. “Around the world in eighty days” by Jules Verne. A couple of new ones: HA1: “On the first day of September, 1974, a child was born to Murray Jacob Katz, a celibate Jewish recluse living across the bay from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and island metropolis then famous for its hotels, its boardwalk, its Miss America Pageant, and its seminal role in the invention of Monopoly.” (For a free hint: Similarities to stories about another child of a Jewish virgin are not coincidental.) HA2: “There is a similarity, if I may be permitted an excursion into tenuous metaphor, between the feel of a chilly breeze and the feel of a knife’s blade, as either is laid across the back of the neck. I can call up memories of both, if I work at it.” ---
**Author:** ![Martha\_Medea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Martha\_Medea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martha_Medea)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/92 "2005-01-21T16:56:04Z")
> [@Sgt.Pepper](#): > > sp3: My Father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of Five Sons. He sent me to Emanuel-Colledge in Cambridge, at Fourteen Years old, where I resided three Years, and applyed my self close to my Studies:… Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift ---
**Author:** ![Sgt.Pepper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@Sgt.Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sgt.Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/93 "2005-01-21T17:02:02Z")
> [@Martha](#): > > Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift Nice job, you got it. I know that one would have stumped me. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/94 "2005-01-21T17:16:53Z")
> [@Sgt.Pepper](#): > > Ok, I’ll offer up some. The first two are fairly easy. > > sp1: ‘What’s is going to be then, eh?’ _A Clockwork Orange_? I’m guessing, because my copy seems to have gone missing. > [@Sgt.Pepper](#): > > sp2: Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of [city]. Homer’s _Odyssey_. I re-read it just this summer. So is no one going to have a go at my #3? (Or the rest, for that matter?) ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/95 "2005-01-21T17:29:13Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > H2: A Saturday afternoon in November WAS approaching THE time of twilight, and THE vast tract of unenclosed wild known as EGDON heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Jude the Obscure? One of Hardy’s, anyway. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Winston\_Bongo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a9adbd/32.png) [@Winston\_Bongo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Bongo)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/96 "2005-01-21T17:56:32Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > Com2: [Character]'s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. _The Maltese Falcon_, the character being Sam Spade. ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/97 "2005-01-21T17:59:06Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > Com2: [Character]'s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. That would be Sam Spade, _The Maltese Falcon_. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/98 "2005-01-21T18:08:08Z")
Two correct simulposts on _The Maltese Falcon_! ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/99 "2005-01-21T18:19:43Z")
“An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.” –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/100 "2005-01-21T20:50:10Z")
> [@hildea](#): > > HA1: “On the first day of September, 1974, a child was born to Murray Jacob Katz, a celibate Jewish recluse living across the bay from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and island metropolis then famous for its hotels, its boardwalk, its Miss America Pageant, and its seminal role in the invention of Monopoly.” _Only Begotten Daughter_, by James Morrow. I am also having trouble coming up with any that are not terribly obvious or hopelessly obscure. There seem to be plenty of open ones, so I will reserve my turn for later. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695.md?page=6)