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?)

For me it's a tossup between:

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

And:

The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Sadly, I don't remember the opening lines to any true literature. (Edited for formatting)

I have not read the latest outlander but likewise have no memory of what happened except I figured all the other POV characters were because Jamie and Claire were like 70 years old by that point and have to die or be boring at some point?

Hm. I like to tell myself that I can listen to audiobooks while I do something else and thus be productive while consuming books but lately that has not been true. I should try to re-establish the habit although maybe not with something quite so long

Audible has been suggesting I might want to listen to Gravity’s Rainbow and Ulysses and mostly I’m all “where did they get that idea?” but part of me is curious what the experience would be like

I gave up on Outlander after the ... fourth? ... book. They just go on too long for me ... and I think I got confused about when they were, where they were, and who were those characters. That said, I can't deal with audiobooks; not sure why, but they just don't work for me.

The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

Ha! Harry has a rough life.

I gave up on Outlander after the ... fourth? ... book.

I think I hung on through the fifth but I was pretty annoyed with all the characters by then and didn't want to deal with all their crap any more. I was so annoyed I haven't watched the series.

I only know the first lines that people quote mas if everyone should know the. I probably haven't even read many of those books, but even if I have I don't go around remembering things on my own. Well, I might remember, but I wouldn't know where it came from. I can't even remember which song the lyrics constantly repeating in my head came from most days

Sadly, I don't remember the opening lines to any true literature.

Ideally, with my First Lines challenge, it's first lines that have really struck me during the year no matter the source. However, I do try to mostly have stuff on there people might have read (either because it's new literary fiction & generally popular, or a classic). Of course the trick is remembering based on the line, so I try to choose (again, ideally) ones with details that might jog one's memory. Of course, all this was easier when I read closer to 50 books rather than 30. This year was slim pickings, but it also seems like there was more recent stuff that had been read than usual.