I finished the fourth novella in the Murderbot series yesterday and dove right into book five. Murderbot is such a delight! I love spending time in their PoV.

Scaramouche! Great movie too with Stewart Granger, with a famous duel across the back of theater seats.

Yes, indeed. And if I remember correctly, it opened with the line from the book (seriously - when a book hands you a great line, why not use it?).

I pushed and he finally said that he was reading Scaramouche ... and I quoted the opening line to him (which surprised him no end). (It IS one of the great opening lines: "He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad")

That is a good line.

For my challenge this year it was slim pickings as I didn't read as much as I usually do or want to. And not a lot of first lines stood out. A few that did were in even more obscure books than some of those I selected and I do try to pick stuff people might have read or at least heard of. You can find the answers here. I like the Shirley Jackson one. Pretty good for a first novel.

Mmm, murderbot

I’m very much looking forward to trawling the Yuletide stories this year to give me something to do for solo Christmas

You can find the answers here.

Oh, I have read one of those! #7, but it was 20+ years ago. That line did not stick with me.

I was looking at some of the previous lists and I hadn't read it then, but if The Library Book had been on the list this year I totally would've gotten it.

I literally just heard about Murderbot this week. Is now on my Kindle.

We used to have a game that was sort of Balderdash plus first lines. You'd get a title and author, and everyone wrote the first and last lines, except for the person who drew the card; they wrote the real ones. Points for anyone who knew and wrote the real ones...points for getting people to guess yours was real. If I didn't know the first and last lines, I would try to write something that would be as hilarious and offensive as possible...so I guess Balderdash plus first lines plus Cards Against Humanity.

I was looking at some of the previous lists and I hadn't read it then, but if The Library Book had been on the list this year I totally would've gotten it.

I love The Library Book. And the chapters are so short I remember it being great for bedtime reading. As opposed to The Hot Zone, which the Math Greek sent me just before the start of shelter-in-place when I was too scared to read it. I finally did in the summer. In fact, those two, and the other non-fiction book on the list, The Feather Thief, were all gifts from the MG. I'm not a huge fan of non-fiction but they were all great reads that I would recommend.

I finished Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo last night. I absolutely loved it!