Identify the books from the opening lines

[look_hergo]

also, TL6 is All Quiet on the Western Front

[BrainGlutton]

BG6: There was a man whose name was [Name], but what his wife called him was often very much worse than that.

[commasense]

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.

[Shodan]

@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

[ReuvenB]

The Awakening is right, Fretful Porpentine.

[commasense]

@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?

[look_hergo]

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!

[Fretful_Porpentine]

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.

[commasense]

@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.

[Tracy_Lord]

@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.

[Shirley_Ujest]

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.

[ReuvenB]

@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?

[Shirley_Ujest]

@XWalrus2

Pride and Prejudice?

Yes!

[Telperien]

Yay! My edition is translated differently, Tracy Lord, so I had to think a bit.

[look_hergo]

Ooh! Ooh! TL7 is “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell”! I’m reading it right now! Well, not *right * now, but currently.

[Cliffy]

“Handmaid’s Tale” and “Angel’a Ashes” are both correct.

–Cliffy

[BrainGlutton]

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), 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!

[Mr.Babbington]

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)

[look_hergo]

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…

[Jayn_Newell]

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?