Here are the rest of the answers to my First Lines challenge: [link]

And here's hoping I read a lot more books next year so as to have a wider selection!

I knew I read number 3 and I am kicking myself over number 5, which I was 100 percent sure was Agatha Christie. I must have read that book 100 times, but probably not in 35 years!

I only guessed a couple of those ... but I already have a towering TBR pile (not including my e-books), so I'm not going to expand it (I am vaguely intrigued by Graham Green ... I remember reading somewhere that he was dragged into court over his review of a Shirley Temple movie, Wee Willie Winkey, in which he suggested there was something not-quite-nice about a British regiment doting on a little girl). He lost, the review was expunged; Green did keep the last surviving copy of the review in his apartment and THAT was lost when his apartment was destroyed in the Blitz.

As an amusing first-line experience, at my old job there was a man who was friendly with me; we'd talk about books sometimes. One time, I asked him what he was reading and he said it was an old book, I probably wouldn't recognize it ... then gave me the title. I responded with the first line of the novel, "He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad" (Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini). He was properly impressed ... whether with the range of my reading or the (lack of) quality. (It's one of the great first lines.)

I responded with the first line of the novel, "He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad"

Excellent!

Well, seriously - isn't that one of the best opening lines ever?

And another, we should mostly know, "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents."

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents."

Little Women! ("...grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.") I re-read that almost every year.

Dear work

I need to take the rest of the week off to read The Expanse.

Love -t

Dear ~t
Request Granted.
Totally not a forged signature for work

There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he nearly deserved it.

That said, my favorite opening line is probably: It is not given to every young girl to enter the harem of Suleiman the Magnificent, and return to her homeland a virgin.

I need to take the rest of the week off to read The Expanse.

I started listening this morning and it hit me that the last time there was a new Expanse, I had an hourlong commute, so a 20-hour book was maybe 2 weeks of dedicated listening time. Now that my commute is the 15 second walk from my kitchen to my desk, I'm going to need to *make time* to listen, which I guess means my house is going to be incredibly clean this weekend since it's too cold to do yard work.

(See also Outlander 9, which is *50* hours long and I am really struggling to make myself want to care about. All I remember about book 8 is that the time travel shenanigans went BONKERS and a lot of random side characters were getting POV chapters all of a sudden. But the audiobook is on my phone now so I guess I'll get around to it eventually?)