It was the best of times...

[sylvar]

I'm adding opening lines to a database to be selected randomly for the new library catalog.  I'm not planning to spend lots more time on the opening-lines database, but if there are some you'd like to suggest, please go ahead.

See the quotes here: http://bernie.tblc.org/suncat2/demo/

Comments

[tally-cat.livejournal.com]

YAY!

I love that!

[shlafe.livejournal.com]

Heh. I posted the opening lines to my favorite books a while back.

here they are for your quoting pleasure:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by my man Mark Twain
You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter.

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.


Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, by JK Rawling
The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive.

[shlafe.livejournal.com]

*laugh* You already had 2.5 of them up there!
(I say .5 because you have a different Potter book.)

Tell me I was your inspiration. :)

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are my muse. I just don't know which muse you are...

[cadrys.livejournal.com]

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Classic, but only Clearwater Christian College owns copies of Paul Clifford, and they don't usually lend their books freely; there would be much less value to the serendipity I'm trying to inject with this feature.

Maybe if I could convince a public library to buy a copy...

[discogravy.livejournal.com]

so do you know of any sites w/ listings of software particularly relevant for libraries?

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

What kind of software would you be interested in?

[segnbora.livejournal.com]

http://www.fatznew.com/First_Sentences/first_sentences.asp, particularly the beginning of Call of the Wild, Paul Clifford, The Catcher in the Rye, The Metamorphosis.

Also: "In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together." The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

"Marley was dead: to begin with." Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, by George Saunders: “It’s one thing to live in a small country, but the country of Inner Horner was so small only one Inner Hornerite at a time could fit inside, and the other six Inner Hornerites had to wait their turns to live in their own country while standing very timidly in the surrounding country of Outer Horner.”

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Ooo, you're making me wish I had easy access to the database tonight so I could add most of these. (Paul Clifford isn't easy for most Sunline borrowers to get, so I'll leave it out.)

[segnbora.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of service. (Actually, I just looked at the 20 or so results of a Google search for: first sentences books )