Next morning the prince went to his father, the King, and said to him : “No one shall be my wife but she whose foot this golden slipper fits.”
Bernard Rudovksy - Are Clothes Modern? An Essay On Contemporary Apparel (1947)
(Loving this book!)
“I’m about to throw up.”
– Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History, by Katie Tur
“Hello, parents of Miss Ward’s kindergarten class!” Class Mom, by Laurie Gelman.
“Dawn came to the Thousand Year Wood.” Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse, by James Goss.
What France’s deeply saddened ambassador Maurice Paleologue called “world madness” began in Russia, as wars so often begin everywhere, with an outburst of patriotic fervor and outraged national feelings as Petersburgers greeted Germany’s declaration with hysterical outpourings of support for their tsar and country.
Passage Through Armageddon: the Russians in War and Revolution 1914-1918 by W. Bruce Lincoln
“The man with the binoculars squirmed forward on his stomach through the sun-warmed brown grass”
Hellstrom’s Hive by Frank Herbert.
“Wow!” Gone Gull, by Donna Andrews
As I stood there with the sword in my hand, the blade dripping blood on the floor, I couldn’t help but wonder if the blood belonged to my father.
Sir Apropos of Nothing, Peter David. (The acknowledgments mention Harlan Ellison, “who fixed the opening paragraph”.)
There are only two kinds of women in the world of clothing. One buys her clothes made-to-order, the other buys her clothes ready-made.
Elizabeth Hawes - Fashion Is Spinach (1938) (free download via archive.org)
“Three?”
From Split Heirs by Lawrence Watt-Evans and Esther Friesner.
There are a lot of forewords and notes from the author and such, but I think this counts as the first official sentence:
“You’re not crazy. STOP CALLING YOURSELF CRAZY,” my mom says for the eleventy billionth time, “You’re just sensitive. And … a little … odd.”
– Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson.
Her first book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, was so funny that it was unsafe to read in public. Highly recommended.
“The Salinas Valley is in Northern California.”
– East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
North of Arles, where the river Rhone divides, a papal legate was assassinated on a January morning in 1208.
Fortress of Eagles by C. J. Cherryh.
Python for Kids by Jason R. Briggs
And two I just finished.
A Scandal in Battersea by Mercedes Lackey
Vallista by Steven Brust
“This morning Rino telephoned.”
—My Brilliant Friend
“In the spring of 1966, Lila, in a state of great agitation, entrusted to me a metal box that contained eight notebooks.”
—The Story of a New Name
“I saw Lila for the last time 5 years ago, in the winter of 2005.”
—Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
“From October 1976 until 1979, when I returned to Naples to live, I avoided resuming a steady relationship with Lila—but it wasn’t easy.”
—The Story of the Lost Child
These four are, collectively, a single narrative:, the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante. Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein.
“Hello. My name is Ethan Nichtern. The six-fingered man was my father’s best friend. Prepare to read.”
The Dharma of “The Princess Bride”, by Ethan Nictern.
Welcome to the Liberty Tax Service basic Income Tax Course.
“A great photographer insists on writing poems.” 300 Arguments, by Sarah Mancuso.
“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.”
Real Tigers, (Slough House) third book in the series.
Mick Heron
Reply With Quote
“Trouble came in the night, riding out of the dust and the darkness.”
Horse Soldiers. By Doug Stanton.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”
The Haunting, by Shirley Jackson