Wednesday, October 10, 2007

But enough about me

Time for some fun. This is the first line of a book:
"But enough about me."
Do you recognize that line? Do you know what book it's from? Think about it before reading on. ("But enough about me." Hmmm, who wrote that line?)

I was just over visiting Dewey's blog (the hidden side of a leaf) and learned about TwitterLit. Have you seen it? Twice a day, the first line of a book is posted, and you try to remember if you've read a book that starts that way. You then click to find out what book the line is from. I think it would be exciting to recognize a first line.
Yahoo! Picks: "For either logophiles or aspiring writers, Twitterlit's twice daily delivery of first sentences may be the most condensed form of education and enlightenment you can get."
When you take a look at TwitterLit, look also at KidderLit, which is TwitterLit for kids! Or for those of us who recognize the child who still lives inside. (I'm just a kid at heart, and I don't mind admitting that to YOU because you'll never tell, will you?) And by the way, that quote above is the first line of So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson. You can receive first lines twice daily by email, RSS, or Twitter. Go see!

Bonus first line practice, in honor of Banned Books Week, in a book for Ages 9-12:
"It was a dark and stormy night."
To find out which book it's from, click HERE. I-knew-the-an-swer-I-knew-the-an-swer!

3 comments:

Dewey said...

The first thing I thought of when I saw "It was a dark and stormy night" is Snoopy, who always sat on his doghouse writing stories that started out that way. Do you remember seeing any of those comics?

Bonnie Jacobs said...

Oh, yes, Dewey, I remember! Snoopy is one of my favorite characters in literature ... yes, some comics are good literature. I clipped many of Snoopy's "It was a dark and stormy night" cartoons and saved them in my writing files.

Once I even included the Peanuts characters in a paper I wrote for a philosophy class on epistemology (about the theory of knowledge). We had studied Bertrand Russell, who said something to the effect that believing that characters in literature were real was claptrap. So I had Snoopy dancing around and put Russell in my little piece of homework fiction and let Linus tell Bertrand Russell, "You are in this claptrap with us!"

CJ said...

My first thought was the contest they hold every year for the worst opening line. It's the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest and some of the lines are truly atrocious... which makes them funny.

cjh