More weird titles
A customer popped into the shop today and said he'd seen yesterday's title. His favourite is a book called It was On FIre When I Lay Down On It. I think it's a brilliant title - makes you envisage someone talking to a police officer in dubious circumstances. In fact, you could easily add, "It was on fire when I lay down on it, honest, Guv!"
If I'd thought of the title, I would definitely have written a book. No idea what this book is about but let us know if you do. It's written by Robert Fulghum. I think it trumps yesterday's weird title and is the winner so far this week.
Keep trying to remember any good ones you've come across.
Weird Book TItles
While working out the back amongst our internet stock last week, I happened to spot a book with a title that made me smile. It's probably happened to all of us at some stage when in a book shop or a library or while perusing someone else's book shelves.
How about this one:
Fish Are Such Liars
I didn't even stop to look what it was about. I just smiled and carried on. But later I thought it might be quite interesting to scout around for strange or amusing titles and/or for those kinds of books where you wonder how on earth anyone could ever have thought it was worth writing such a book or that it would ever find a reader or a buyer.
Anyway, Fish are Such Liars starts this week's theme of oddities. The book is by Ronald Pertwee and turns out to be fiction rather than fishing. I was envisaging some angler reminiscing about catching (or not) wily trout but it was not to be
Last of the famous opening lines
If you looked on our Facebook page yesterday, you will have seen that the quote was from The God Boy by Ian Cross. He's a well known New Zealand author and it's a great book. Get yourself a copy if you haven't read it yet. It is highly recommended.
And to finish off the week, here are the last few opening line challenges. Hope you've managed to get most of them (or at least kicked yourself metaphorically when you saw the answers)
1. It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain, he fell in love with him.
2. Someone must have made a false accusation against Josef K, for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong.
3. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
Answers
Joseph Heller / Catch 22
Franz Kafka / The Trial
LP Hartley / The Go-Between
And yet more first lines
Here are today's three opening lines. Answers are at the end. One of these is my own favourite.
'Take my camel, dear,' said my Aunt Dot as she climbed down from this animal on her return from high mass.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
And if you checked out our Facebook opening line challenge, you will see that the book was Faces in the Water by Janet Frame. All the books mentioned here are available in our shop or on line. If you haven't read them, you should give them a go.
1 Rose Macaulay The Towers of Trebizone 2 Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
3 Margaret Atwood Handmaid's Tale
Some more opening lines
If you took the Facebook challenge yesterday, you may have struggled a little to identify the book. It was Noel Virtue's The Redemption of Elsden Bird (see attached picture). If you haven't read it, pop into the shop and get a copy - it's a great book.
Also check out the new challenge of opening lines now on our Facebook page (much more difficult than the ones here).
For today, here are three more really famous opening lines - answers below but no peeking.
All children, except one, grow up.
Marley was dead, to begin with.
It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed.
JM Barrie Peter Pan, Charles Dickens Christmas Carol, Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog .....
Name the book from the first line
For anyone who checked out our Facebook page, the opening line was from Robin Hyde's The Godwits Fly. With the missing words put in, the opening line reads "Until the year after the war, life for the Hannays always meant other people's houses, and they wore out a long line of cats, invariably and irrespective of sex, named Tam."
Test yourself with the next three famous opening lines (answers below but don't peek)
"It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen."
"I was born in the city of Bombay... once upon a time."
"Call me Ishmael."
(George Orwell 1984 / Salman Rushdie Midnight's CHildren / Herman Melville Moby Dick)
Opening lines
Just in case you've spent the weekend worrying over Friday's mystery dust jacket, it belonged to a Norman Mailer book called Ancient Evenings. Quite an unusual book which is not for the faint-hearted.
This week we're abandoning dust wrappers and moving on to opening lines. There are many really famous opening lines. For example, see if you can get these three. You might get this first one "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man...." without my even having to finish it. Or this one, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." And last for today, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
Answers: Jane Austen/Pride and Prejudice, Tolstoy/Anna Karenina, Dickens/A Tale of Two Cities.
Those were the easy ones. Try the challenge on our Facebook page if you are interested in testing your recall of memorable opening lines.
Last day of dust jackets
Yesterday's dust jackets came from two very different authors. One is a famous New Zealand children's writer Margaret Mahy. The book was called The Magician of Hoad. If you haven't read any of her stories to your children, get started now. They are really enjoyable and generations of kiwi kids have grown up addicted to her books.
The second wrapper was from a book called The Comedians by Graham Greene, a very good read, as are all his books. I would say they are must-reads if you haven't already done so.
Try and see if you recognise the dust jacket of today's picture. Only one today as it is quite difficult (I think). A small hint: it is not the Lonely Planet Guide to Egypt.
