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Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

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Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

#51

Really cool! > The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. I did not refresh to check if you already have that, but I really find it very strong. Its from Kings "Dark Tower - Black" (edit: its "The Gunslinger", not Black. its named "Schwarz" in the german translations) the first of 8 books in the series. If you dont know it; its not like the usual King books. It mixes fantasy elements (inspi…

I actually read the first book and it was so poorly written it made me wonder if I should continue, because I did find the general story quite engaging. I've heard it gets better/tighter in subsequent books, but it was the only King i've ever read so wasn't sure if he just had a sort of sloppy style (he did write pretty prolifically). I also read it following a Cormac McCarthy book so that might have lead me to belie…

> I actually read the first book and it was so poorly written it made me wonder if I should continue

In his defense, that was early in his career, and in one of the countless afterwords or prefaces, he also mentions that he has, of course, evolved since then.

"The Gunslinger" is really a bit borderline. The next one, "The Drawing of the Three" is much more complex and better written. You could also read the last book first ("The Wind Through the Keyhole"); it’s separate from the main story and set somewhere in between, but it’s the final book.

> Cormac McCarthy

No country for old men? Its probably in my top 5 of all the books (and movies) that I read. A masterpiece.

Edit: i realized i mixed the names up. Its not black, its "The Gunslinger". Its translated as black in the german series and confused me.

Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

#52

I'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how much of it you can quote without looking :) For me, its: Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem na…

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

Though for me it’s the second line that nails it: “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually read the first book and it was so poorly written it made me wonder if I should continue, because I did find the general story quite engaging. I've heard it gets better/tighter in subsequent books, but it was the only King i've ever read so wasn't sure if he just had a sort of sloppy style (he did write pretty prolifically). I also read it following a Cormac McCarthy book so that might have lead me to belie…

> I actually read the first book and it was so poorly written it made me wonder if I should continue In his defense, that was early in his career, and in one of the countless afterwords or prefaces, he also mentions that he has, of course, evolved since then. "The Gunslinger" is really a bit borderline. The next one, "The Drawing of the Three" is much more complex and better written. You could also read the last book…

I haven't read No Country yet - I think at the time it was Suttree which is definitely in my top 5 - I also read The Road recently and was pretty blown away, really quick read and very meticulously structured, I loved it. I'll make a point to read No Country, I heard it was originally written as a screenplay and so is less descriptive than his other work.

Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

#54

I'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how much of it you can quote without looking :) For me, its: Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem na…

There’s also: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

#58
post #14

> so hopefully you can refresh a few times and get a fresh one every time If you randomly sample from only 60 quotes, then after 10 refreshes there will be a greater than 50% chance of at least one repeat, and by 20 refreshes it's up to 95%. This is an example of the birthday paradox[1]. On the flip side, if someone wants to see all 60 quotes, they will have to refresh the page an average of 281 times, mostly (~80%)…

I'd prefer have a unique and shared quote each day keyed on the day of the year. Then restart when going above N and shuffle.

Why shuffle, though?

Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

#59
This is awesome! 9 months ago or so some coworkers and I had the idea to make a Wordle style game where you have to guess the book using some clues from a book including the first sentence. I stopped adding clues myself but your post reminded me to get it open sourced :)

There's a small client-only app here to check out: https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle https://loganintech.github.io/bookdle/

Or if you want to see the source code for the "platform" where I added a database and such: https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle-platform

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