What are your favorite first lines?

We all know memorable first lines from famous novels. There's, of course:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

And there's also:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Children's lit has its classic lines, too. Like:

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug." - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

But there are very many novels out there. And, while they do not provide modern-day writers with material to manipulate and, in some cases, abuse (I'm thinking, the kick-off to Austen's novel), they do have some pretty good openers. One that I like particularly comes from another kids' book, C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I chuckle whenever I read it and like to fancy that I'll one day have the opportunity to read it aloud at some storytime hour somewhere. It so would make a great spoken sentence. As a matter of fact the whole first paragraph is stellar and with it Lewis paints an enviable character sketch of a main character; you get the feeling you know who you're dealing with when you've read the first page.

"There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

I can just imagine that avuncular Lewis telling this story beginning to the neighborhood kids. And do you ever hear of anyone talking about it? At least the negative answer to that question means that the sentence has survived untainted by the overuse of writers looking for a cutesy, "clever" way to open their own stories. I might mention again poor Jane Austen's first line to end all first lines.

I suppose that my love of this line is unique and explains why no one has pinched it to use it in their own way. Lewis's line is unassuming, it doesn't try too hard. And perhaps it plays to a childlike sense of humor. But how many subtle lines can send a kid into hysterics? Granted I have yet to witness this but I haven't tested the theory yet. And if my inner gauge is correct I am sure that I would have been rolling on the floor as a kid and reading this line out to adults while waiting to see them collapse into fits of laughter. (I used to do this - read from my books, look up after I'd read the good part, and wonder why my family wasn't chortling heartily. But that's a story for another day.)

So this is my nomination for the best first lines list. It's not Austen or Dickens but just think what a great theater-trained actor could do with it, reading the first clause matter-of-factly, raising his head and stating slowly and viciously "and he almost deserved it," with eyes narrowing at the poetic justice implied.

Now, what's your nomination?

Juggling books when you don't know how to juggle

I have so many books going in my life that it would be embarrassing to write about them all. But I'll write about the most recent. I seem to be doing a good job lately of starting books and then placing my bookmark in them long enough to permanently disturb the binding. The Rebecca Notebook by Daphne Du Maurier is currently experiencing that kind of spine damage from the 'men of Jane Austen' bookmark (the idea came from the PBS site) I personally made. Then I dove into Possession by AS Byatt for which the word 'brilliant' seems an appropriate adjective, if generally overused. I have finally gotten around to Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, the Booker Prize winner of 2007, which is a quick read and charming and delightful so far. I began Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx but guess I wasn't in the mood for something so seriously serious so, though it's just a short story of fifty or so pages, it hasn't been finished yet. (Oh my, this is getting embarrassing.) Carson McCullers' Member of the Wedding is good, but not so cheery to say the least, so that's on the backburner right now. And, finally, I'm fortunate to have an advance reading copy of a novel coming out in February called Addition by Toni Jordan. It's always fun to get to read something early. Did I mention my re-read of Pride and Prejudice?

So I should have loads of commentary in the weeks to come. (One would hope I'd be finished in that time.) Meanwhile, I'll have to carve out a little time for figuring out why I'm such a freewheeling reader.

First Term at Malory Towers is dated but delightful

Now, you see, this is what I wish kids were still reading. Good old fun stuff with no mention of wetbars anywhere to be seen. Kids just being kids, getting into mischief, making friends, unabashedly loving their schools, having fun. Apparently, at some point in history kids enjoyed this sort of thing.

Some kids, the kind who like old-fashioned stories, still will. There are plenty of old-style or at least very Englishy, terms here like 'jolly,' 'hark,' 'hols' for 'holidays, and 'dormie' for dormitory. Characters feel swells of love in their hearts for their boarding school, Malory Towers, and the author's not writing it out of sarcasm. No worrying about being nerdy (or dorky or whatever the kids call it these days). The book is as unashamed of its own feelings and statements as tiny children are. When was the last time you saw a child of three worry about being cool? You don't because they don't. And neither does this book.

This story of a girl's first term at a boarding school is not the tightest writing. It's just fun. No big storyline is really carried through the novel; it's just a string of engaging events linked by the theme of a student's first year. The point of view is sometimes from one character, sometimes from another in a way that is just simple rather than confusing. This is not great literature in the tradition of Pride and Prejudice but it's great anyway and is, in its own way, a classic.

How d'ya like them apples an' oranges?

It seems some screenwriter has taken the lovely Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and based a fantasy called Lost in Austen on it. Now, I'm straying a bit, just a bit, from the topic of books because Lost in Austen is a television program; but, with its literary roots it seems an appropriate tangent to explore.

After thinking so much about the unfortunate-but-oddly-fun-at-the-same-time Lost in Austen, I thought back on the book Austenland by Shannon Hale. They're really quite similar (a romance in a regency-esque environment) as so many JA knock-offs tend to be, but I recently blogged about its relatively good taste.This stands in such dire contradiction to some aspects of the new Lost in Austen that I selfishly thought I'd ask JA lovers and readers a question or two: How do you compare or contrast the arguably more innocent Austenland (which has had its own criticisms of being too tame) and the arguably racier Lost in Austen?

Granted, I realize this is an apples and oranges situation, with one being a television production and one a novel, but as they are both related works of writing I thought, why not?

Is Austenland too innocent to be believable? Is Lost in Austen a bit vulgar at times?