{"id":1496,"date":"2005-04-19T15:34:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-19T23:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2005-04-19T15:34:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-19T23:34:00","slug":"1496","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=1496","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\">A book meme, stolen from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/rollick\/364025.html\">Surrealism really takes it out of you<\/a>:<i>Post the first sentence of ten favorite books, and see if your friends can figure out what those books are.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>So here goes:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of the road in northern Wisconsin. <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0140178139\/qid=1114266919\/sr=2-3\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3\/104-2676042-4445511\">Leviathan<\/a><\/i> by Paul Auster]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>I was the shadow of the waxwing slain <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0679723420\/qid=1114267139\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/104-2676042-4445511\">Pale Fire<\/a><\/i> by Vladimir Nabokov, guessed by <a href=\"http:\/\/midnighttoeight.tripod.com\/\">Christy<\/a>]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0156453800\/qid=1114267010\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/104-2676042-4445511\">Invisible Cities<\/a><\/i> by Italo Calvino, guessed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spyderella.net\/\">Sharon<\/a>]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice&#8211;not because of his voice, of because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother&#8217;s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God&#8230; <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0345361792\/qid=1114267169\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/104-2676042-4445511\">A Prayer for Owen Meany<\/a><\/i> by John Irving, guessed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spyderella.net\/\">Sharon<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/fivebranchtree.blogspot.com\/\">Brian<\/a>]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>All this happened, more or less. <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0440180295\/qid=1114267310\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/104-2676042-4445511\">Slaughterhouse-Five<\/a><\/i> by Kurt Vonnegut, guessed <a href=\"http:\/\/midnighttoeight.tripod.com\/\">Christy<\/a>]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0380729407\/qid=1114267430\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/104-2676042-4445511\">Something Wicked This Way Comes<\/i><\/a> by Ray Bradbury, guessed by <a href=\"http:\/\/maximumverbosit.blogspot.com\/\">Betty<\/a>]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Bund\u00c3\u00ada was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0060929790\/qid=1114267487\/sr=2-2\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2\/104-2676042-4445511\">One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/a><\/i> by Gabriel Garcia Marquez]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It is only ten miles beyond the city that the river loses its momentum, drooling into the brackish estuary that feeds Iron Bay. <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0345444388\/qid=1114267546\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/104-2676042-4445511\">The Scar<\/a><\/i> by China Mi\u00c3\u00a9ville]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>For legal reasons, I have had to alter a number of facts in this book. <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0679750290\/qid=1114267614\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/104-2676042-4445511\">Operation Shylock<\/a><\/i> by Philip Roth]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. <strong>[<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/1400052920\/qid=1114267673\/sr=1-3\/ref=sr_1_3\/104-2676042-4445511?v=glance&#038;s=books\">The Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide to the Galaxy<\/a><\/i> by Douglas Adams, guessed by pretty much everybody]<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>They&#8217;re all from novels, and only in one case did I cut anything &#8212; I stopped at a semi-colon; to quote any further would have given it away. Guess away.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A book meme, stolen from Surrealism really takes it out of you:Post the first sentence of ten favorite books, and see if your friends can figure out what those books are. So here goes: Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of the road in northern Wisconsin. [Leviathan by Paul Auster] &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=1496\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}