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Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Original poster

first lines of books

322 replies

Blandmum · 15/02/2006 17:08

Nice easy one to start us all off

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.'

Book and Author then you give one.

No googling allowed

OP posts:
lionhearted · 18/02/2006 20:53

Don't let me be the one to kill the thread!
I could give a clue ....

Nightynight · 18/02/2006 21:37

its too hard...

Mazzystar · 18/02/2006 21:44

yes clue needed

lionhearted · 18/02/2006 23:05

A close relation of the mouse and his child ...

lionhearted · 19/02/2006 17:04

bump de bump de bump

radida · 19/02/2006 17:45

That's right Nightynight.

Too hard still lionhearted - any more clues? - This is fun, and I don't want the thread killed off either!

singersgirl · 19/02/2006 18:06

Don't know that one at all, Lionhearted.

How about " It was the morning of my eighty-first birthday and I was in bed with my catamite, when Ali told me that the archibishop had come to visit". (Think the last bit may be a paraphrase, but it's something like that).

CarolinaMoon · 19/02/2006 18:48

I know Lionhearted's one - it's Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban and is a fabbo book.

ok, this isn't too hard:

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.

mummytosteven · 19/02/2006 18:48

brighton rock by grahame green!

fab book and film!

CarolinaMoon · 19/02/2006 18:52

you are just too quick MtS

singersgirl, I have found yours by googling cos it sounded intriguing, but that is no doubt cheating...

Ellbell · 19/02/2006 19:46

No idea about singersgirl's. No-one has got this one yet, either (though it's an easy one, honest...):

'Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Bonapartes.'

laurenhannah · 19/02/2006 19:58

singers girl - Anthony burgess - Earthly Powers

ellbell - War and Peace

laurenhannah · 19/02/2006 20:03

'The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.'

mummytosteven · 19/02/2006 20:04

the "go-between" by L.P.Hartley

Ellbell · 19/02/2006 22:21

'High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two Professors of English Literature approached one another at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour'.

singersgirl · 20/02/2006 10:54

Ellbell, don't know it, but is it Malcolm Bradbury?

lionhearted · 20/02/2006 11:44

Sounds like Bradbury, but if not, can you give a clue?

clerkKent · 20/02/2006 13:08

Changing Places, David Lodge?

goldstarlover · 20/02/2006 19:53

only just got back to this thread! jonesthesteam and singersgirl... yes! it was catch 22!

Ellbell · 20/02/2006 22:12

clerkKent has it... it's Changing Places

Mercy · 20/02/2006 22:28

Haven't joined in for a while, so here goes

'This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve'

radida · 23/02/2006 13:39

Wilkie Collins I think, - The Woman in White - Mercy?

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