First Line Friday

My friend Kathy hosts First Line Friday. You can find her at the link below. Check her out. She has a wonderful blog of lots of reviews of books. You can't go wrong by checking out her blog.


http://bagsbooksandbonjovi.blogspot.com/2010/03/first-line-friday.html


FIRST LINE FRIDAY...First lines have always intrigued me since I heard an author
say that writing the first sentence is, by far, the most difficult part of writing a novel.
The reasoning was that a first sentence can make the reader continue reading or
cause the book to be tossed aside. So, go to your To Be Read Pile, choose as
many books as you want and share the first line. Be sure to include the title and
author so that if your reader also finds it intriguing, they can find the book. Also,
share your thoughts about the first line. Does it draw you in? Is it...exciting...thought
provoking...scary...funny?

I've been on a sci-fi kick this past week. I grabbed one of the books in my TBR pile and its one of the sci-fi books I got through www.paperbackswap.com last week. If you haven't checked out this site you're missing out on a great way to exchange your old read for new old reads or slightly new old reads. I love that site. I've saved nearly $400 in the past 3 years on just books I want to read there alone. I still get books from other places too but if you're looking for an out of date book or an old read chances are likely you'll be able to find it there.

My book is called The Way It Wasn't: Great Science Fiction Stories of Alternate History. I admit I'm a Sci-Fi geek. I love reading short stories from this genre especially. The first short story in this book is called Lion Time in Timbuctoo by Robert Silverberg. Here's the first line....


In the dry stifling days of early summer, the Emir lay dying, the king, the imam, Big Father of the Songhay, in his cool, dark mud-walled palace in the Sankore quarter of Old Timbuctoo.


With all those titles he must be some Emir. It'll be interesting to see where this story goes. I have no clue except that I can figure its set in a jungle setting. That's one thing about short stories is they're the best of a long read condensed for those days I just can't get into a huge read.

On a side note, I almost bought Stephen King's Under the Dome. Talk about a huge read. With my carpal tunnel I doubt I'd be able to hold this book very long. Even with a softback cover. Seriously, this book only has 1088 pages. I do want to read it so I'm sure I'll see if www.paperbackswap.com has it yet and if it doesn't then I'll go to www.amazon.com and get it there. It's only about $10 so that's better than what I would have paid for it where I saw it.

Anyway, off to check for the book while I'm thinking about it. :D