Fractional meme compliance

I’ve seen a number of people chip in with the First Lines To Ten Favorite Books meme. I can’t, really. For one thing, most of my books are still in the next state over. For another, my list of ten fave books is too fluid to nail down. But here are two I can recite from memory, and would certainly go on the list:

“The year Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.” — The Princess Bride, William Goldman

“Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach.” — Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Though this brings up the question of whether those are really the opening lines of those books. One could argue that the opening line of Watchmen is really “Rorschach’s Journal, October 12th, 1985”, or perhaps the image on the cover of the first issue (which really does function as an opening panel). Which is why I didn’t bother with Finder, my current favorite comic. It’s three pages into the first issue of Finder before we have any textual content, and that’s just a yawn.

And the first line of The Princess Bride is arguably “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

To early to say whether this will be one of the favorite books, but I’m likin’ it real fine so far: Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Here’re the opening couple of paragraphs to give you the flavor:

I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when Keep A-Movin’ Dan would decide to deadhead until the heat death of the Universe.

Extra-special cool: You can download the book for free in a number of formats, or just read it on the web. I started reading it on my PalmOS device, but now I’m carrying around the dead tree edition. It’s pretty short — about 47,000 words, BBEdit tells me.