Well, it took me some time, let me tell you, to wade through the hundreds of comments on the book title post, but I know you can't contain yourselves any longer, waiting for the answers, so without further ado:
1.
Passage to India by E.M. Forster
2.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4.
The View from Saturday by E. L.
Konigsburg. If you haven't read any of her work, you so should. She's the only author to win a
Newbery Medal and
Newbery Honor in the same year. She also won the
Newbery Medal for this one. And her name is Elaine, so how could you not like her?
5.
An Episode of Sparrows by
Rumer Godden. My mom would be mad if I didn't include this book. That is, if my mom read my blog, which she doesn't. She doesn't really "get" blogs. Then she calls me after she goes to church and asks, "Why does everyone know about my life?"
6.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. Lucy and Elaine trade off every night who gets to pick which
audiobook they're going to listen to while they go to sleep. Lately, each night that it's Lucy's turn, she picks this one.
7.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. (The "e" is long instead short like we pronounce it in the U.S.) He was a man. Married to a woman also named Evelyn. Their friends called them He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn. That's kind of funny. Until they got divorced. But it's a great book. And mini-series with Jeremy Irons, so...
8.
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. I love
The End of the Affair, but my real Greene favorite is
The Quiet American. However, that one starts, "After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room..." so--maybe not as compelling.
9.
The Brimstone Wedding by Barbara Vine. I knew no one would get that one. I just want someone, anyone out there to read that book and talk about it with me. My dad read it. He thought it was weird. I'm gonna need more than that.
10.
Ordinary People by Judith Guest. This is one of those rare times in which the movie almost lives up to the greatness of the book: Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, Judd Hirsch...
11.
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
12.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
13.
Rebecca by Daphne
DuMaurier. I really thought everyone would get that one. Huh.
14.
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine
L'Engle (sequel to
A Wrinkle in Time)
15.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler also by E.L.
Konigsburg. Ask a bunch of people my age what book they remember from grade school, and a lot of them will say this one. It's awesome. It's about a brother and sister who run away and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
16.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Darren never reads fiction, only non-fiction. I read almost exclusively fiction. One day, he said he wanted to try some fiction. Instead of listening to my recommendations, he said, "No, I want to read what you're reading," which happened to be
Portrait of the Artist right then. He grabbed it up and read that first line about the
moocow and baby
tuckoo and said (while tossing the book over his shoulder), "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." He's not alone--even Joyce's wife asked him, "Why don't you write books people can read?" I still like him, though (Joyce, that is. Oh, and Darren too.)
17.
Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
18.
The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes. Most people know Estes from
Ginger Pye or
The Moffats or
The Hundred Dresses (though we LOVE that one), but this is another one with which Lucy is obsessed. It's about two little girls who sit upstairs in their playroom in a house on Garden Lane with a
gingko tree outside their window, drawing pictures of witches. Up on Glass Hill, all the things the girls draw come true. I'm going to get her the
audiobook for Christmas.
Shhh, don't tell her.
19.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
20.
The Diary of Anne Frank21. (I knew no one would get this one either)--
Glittering Images by Susan
Howatch. Great book though, about espionage in the Church of England.
So there you go. What are some of your favorite first lines?