# 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:** 8
**Author:** ![look\_hergo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85e7bf/32.png) [@look\_hergo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_hergo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/141 "2005-01-23T04:27:44Z")
also, TL6 is **All Quiet on the Western Front** ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/142 "2005-01-23T05:56:59Z")
BG6: There was a man whose name was [Name], but what his wife called him was often very much worse than that. ---
**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 23, 2005, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/143 "2005-01-23T15:51:34Z")
Since no one has identified two of mine, I’ll call time and give them myself: Com3: Μηνιν αειδε θεα πηλιαδεω [character] ουλομενην ή μυρια αχαιοισ αλγε’ εθηκε… Homer’s _Iliad._ (I thought the Greek would be a dead giveaway, expecially after someone else gave us the _Odyssey_ in English. Com4: It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. _The Remains of the Day_, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Highly recommended, BTW. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/144 "2005-01-23T19:36:56Z")
> [@Waenara](#): > > Wa2: I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeword that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The Left Hand of Darkness. OK, here’s a tough one: > [@](#): > > It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the widnows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneakin every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![ReuvenB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@ReuvenB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ReuvenB)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/145 "2005-01-23T20:37:34Z")
The Awakening is right, **Fretful Porpentine**. ---
**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 23, 2005, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/146 "2005-01-23T20:40:17Z")
> [@Fretful Porpentine](#): > > FP7: “The Signorina had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all. She promised us south rooms, with a view close together, instead of which are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart.” Just guessing: _A Room With a View_? ---
**Author:** ![look\_hergo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85e7bf/32.png) [@look\_hergo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_hergo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/147 "2005-01-23T21:57:20Z")
It was late last night when I posted, and I didn’t get to add my first lines to the game, so here they are now: look1: “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said (character) to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. look2: He wished the phone would stop ringing. It was bad enough to be sick let alone having a phone ring all night long. good luck! ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/148 "2005-01-23T22:11:26Z")
> [@](#): > > look1: “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said (character) to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. _Charlotte’s Web._ _A Room With A View_ and _The Secret History_ are both correct. ---
**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 23, 2005, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/149 "2005-01-23T22:18:50Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > OK, here’s a tough one: > > > [@](#): > > > > It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the widnows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneakin every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick. > > Regards, > Shodan There are no tough ones in the age of Google. I found this one in seconds, but since it’s not from my personal knowledge, I’ll refrain from giving it away. I assume that an unstated rule of this game is that you have to know the answer from your own reading, from clues within the quote, or through inspired guessing, and that searching the Web isn’t permitted. ---
**Author:** ![Tracy\_Lord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@Tracy\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracy_Lord)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/150 "2005-01-23T22:38:50Z")
> [@Harimad-sol](#): > > TL2–_The Three Musketeers?_ > [@Rilchiam](#): > > TL5 is _Still Life With Woodpecker_ by Tom Robbins. > [@look@hergo!](#): > > also, TL6 is **All Quiet on the Western Front** Yes, yes, yes! One more, **TL7** : Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/151 "2005-01-23T22:45:31Z")
I’m game. SU1: " Oh ( character name)!" cried his wife, " Of all the good fortune! (Name of nearby property) has been rented at last. The gentleman’s name is (X) and he is single, my dear. A man of a large fortune. What a fine thing for our young girls." SU2: When the girl came rushing up the steps, i decided she was wearing far too many clothes. ---
**Author:** ![ReuvenB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@ReuvenB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ReuvenB)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/152 "2005-01-23T22:49:48Z")
> [@Shirley Ujest](#): > > SU1: " Oh ( character name)!" cried his wife, " Of all the good fortune! (Name of nearby property) has been rented at last. The gentleman’s name is (X) and he is single, my dear. A man of a large fortune. What a fine thing for our young girls." Pride and Prejudice? ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2005, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/153 "2005-01-23T23:13:34Z")
> [@XWalrus2](#): > > Pride and Prejudice? Yes! ---
**Author:** ![Telperien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@Telperien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperien)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/154 "2005-01-24T00:35:34Z")
Yay! My edition is translated differently, **Tracy Lord,** so I had to think a bit. ---
**Author:** ![look\_hergo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85e7bf/32.png) [@look\_hergo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_hergo)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/155 "2005-01-24T23:10:19Z")
Ooh! Ooh! **TL7** is “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell”! I’m reading it right now! 😃 Well, not \*right \* now, but currently. ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/156 "2005-01-25T17:39:05Z")
“Handmaid’s Tale” and “Angel’a Ashes” are both correct. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/157 "2005-01-27T05:47:47Z")
Nobody got BG2, BG3, or BG5, so I might as well call time. BG2: The morning sunshine descended like an amber shower-bath on [Name] Castle, lighting up with a heartening glow its ivied walls, its rolling parks, its gardens, outhouses, and messuages, and such of its inhabitants as chanced at the moment to be taking the air. – _Blandings Castle,_ by P.G. Wodehouse. (About the adventures of Clarence Threepwood, the Ninth Earl of Emsworth, a quintessential old country gentleman whose principal goal in life is to raise hogs and pumpkins that will take prizes at county agricultural competitions, but who is always being troubled and distracted by his social duties and family scrapes.) BG3: “Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.” The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. – “The Man Who Would Be King,” by Kipling. Perhaps not a fair choice for this thread as it’s a short story – but still, I’m surprised nobody got it. BG5: It was the year the bears were so bad in Bosnia. – I’m **not** surprised nobody got this one. It’s from “Cornet Eszterhazy,” the first story in _The Adventures of Dr. Eszterhazy_ (Owlswick Press, 1990), a collection of short stories by the late lamented Avram Davidson ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avram\_Davidson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avram_Davidson)), about the unflappable and urbane Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy, an aristocratic scholar-detective-and-sometime-wizard living in the fictitious Empire of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania (modeled on Austria-Hungary, of course) in the late 19th Century – a book I recommend **highly** to all Dopers, if you’re lucky enough to find a copy! 🙂 It has been written of Davidson that his prose, fiction and nonfiction alike, “begs to be read aloud.” (His essay on Aleister Crowley is a true gem!) From the second story in the collection, “The Autogondola Invention”: > [@](#): > > Incomparably less large and vast than the Russian Empire, incomparably less powerful than the German Empire, incomparably less sophisticated than the Austro-Hungarian Empire – still Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, its mere name a subject for risibility elsewhere, was his empire, his native land. It may not have functioned very well? so much the more was he pleased that it functioned at all. Its Secret Police was a joke? so much the more he too would enjoy the joke; no one laughed at the Secret Polices in the other empires. Its many languages rivaled Babel or Pentecost? let them: at least here no schoolboy was flogged for praying in whatsoever minor mother toungue. One empire had already, fairly recently, gone from the political map of Europe; and although the name of Bonaparte still rang like a tocsin here and there, it was uncertain that the Prince Imperial would himself ever ring it successfully. > > Day by day others asked, how fared their country’s wheat compared with Russian wheat, its butter with Danish butter, its timber with Carpathian timber, its tar with Baltic tar, its cloth with English cloth? Day by day the same spokes of the universal wheel flashed by: love, sorrow, terror, death, success, failure, hunger, joy, growth, decay, weakness, strength: the wheel turned and turned and turned: nothing stayed the same, no one bathed twice in the same flowing water for the water had flowed on and flowed away. _There is no star at the pole of the universe,_ young Dr. Eszterhazy recollected the ancient astronomer; and if there was and long had been but blankness in the comparable area of his own country, then might there not be a space and place for him? What he hoped for, others did not even think of; what others did not think, might he not think of? > > And after thinking, do? Run right out to the library and **get some Avram Davidson!** 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Babbington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Mr.Babbington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Babbington)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/158 "2005-01-27T06:11:47Z")
No one seemed to have gotten my first one… MB1: Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. (It’s Non-Fiction) ---
**Author:** ![look\_hergo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85e7bf/32.png) [@look\_hergo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_hergo)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/159 "2005-01-27T07:21:14Z")
Someone who’s good at keeping track of stuff should make a listing of the opening lines that haven’t been solved yet. I would, but I’m hopeless… ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Jayn\_Newell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jayn\_Newell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayn_Newell)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695/160 "2005-01-27T12:04:50Z")
I think I"ll call time on mine, since I doubt anyone will get it. JN: My mother was the village whore and I loved her very much. The book is _Pigs don’t fly_, the first book of the _Unexpected Dragon_ trilogy, written by, er, Mary Brown? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/identify-the-books-from-the-opening-lines/285695.md?page=9)