Woof, woof, woof, woof!
Henry Miller, Nexus
Although in my old age I, Allan Quatermain, have taken to writing—after a fashion—never yet have I set down a single word of the tale of my first love and of the adventures that are grouped around her beautiful and tragic history.
Marie, by H Rider Haggard
“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”
With everything going on int he world lately, I needed something comfy and familiar to lose myself in.
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
“The Catcher in the Rye,” J. D. Salinger.
Never read it before now; how did this find a publisher in 1951???!!!???
“This is how I feel every single day of my life, like I’m falling without a parachute.”
New Kid, by Jerry Craft
“Any piece of verbal art–be it a joke, or a folktale or an anecdote–is the sum of its parts.”
Foxfire Story: Oral Tradition in Southern Appalachia, edited by T. J. Smith
“I hadn’t had lunch with Patricia Utley since the last time the Red Sox won the pennant. That seems like another way to say never, but in fact it had been ten years.”
Taming a Sea-Horse by Robert Parker
Ah, yes. I remember the first time I read Axel Phartuccio’s One Summer in Blawnox, too.
“Once upon a time, a man came from the sky and killed my wife.”
*Golden Son, *by Pierce Brown
“On the second day of January, windswept and bright, a Seminole named Sammy Tigertail dumped a dead body in the Lostmans River.”
Nature Girl, by Carl Hiaasen
“What does Marie Antoinette have to do with ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’?”
The Greatest Music Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from Music History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy, by Rick Beyer.
This is one of the best opening lines I’ve read so far this year.
“We’d been adrift for eight days when the ninny tried to eat the monkey. I lay in the bow of the boat, under the moonlight, slowly expiring from thirst and heartbreak, while the great beef-brained boy, Drool, made bumbling snatches for the monkey, who was perched on the bowsprit behind my head, screeching and clawing at my jester’s hat, and jingling his bells in a festive manner.”
– Christopher Moore Shakespeare for Squirrels
Just published last month
It was hot in the cabin of the freighter Asiatic Dream.
The Golden Skull, by John Blaine
On March 14, 1954, a young Ethiopian in a rural village lay badly injured.
The Man Called Brown Condor, by Thomas E Simmons
“There was once a man who got his living by working in the fields.”
Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales, edited by Gordon Jarvie.
(Note that the sentence is from from the story “The Milk-White Dove” by Elizabeth Grierson.)
“When Ned Sweeney leaves the apartment on West Fourth Street it’s about 8:30p.m.”
Receptor by Alan Glynn
“The largest horse auction east of the Mississippi was held every Monday deep in Pennsylvania Amish Country.”
The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, The Horse That Inspired a Nation, by Elizabeth Letts
“A door slammed so hard that the glass prisms on the hall light clashed in alarm.”
Secrecy, by Belva Plain
“She liked his car.”
– Fair Warning, by Michael Connelly
“It was a splendid funeral.”
A Curate for All Seasons, by Fred Secombe
“When Felicia Patterson decided to become a florist, she had no idea she’d end up working with dildos.”
—The Vampire’s Last Dance by Deanna Chase
“Gan Brightblade’s last thoughts before his neck was broken were about how happy he was.”
Dragon Precinct by Keith R. A. DeCandido