you should add closing line too.
That has the possibility of being full of spoilers.
Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
111–120 of 120 posts
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the “German tank problem”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem?wprov=sfti...
No, it's not the same as the German tank problem, because that assumes all sampled values are unique (and totally ordered). It's closer to the "species richness" estimation problem, where you estimate the total number of species from a sample (specimens) with many repeated values (species).
Ah, you’re right! The German tank problem was based on reading the serial numbers I think.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#113[dead]
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#114It's not a famous literary work, and you don't need to post this, but my favorite opening sentence is "The smallmouth bass can be considered the gentleman of the warm water stream". Harry Murray's book on fly fishing for small mouth in the Shenendoah valley. Thanks for the opportunity to share :-)
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#115This same idea as a Wikidata query: https://w.wiki/SV9k (something something everything is a nail)
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's so interesting that the intuitive meaning of this has changed - first meaning grey, then bright blue, and now... perhaps black, perhaps nothing? What does "a dead channel" mean to kids today? I recently re-read the sprawl trilogy and thought Neuromancer stood up very well, but the others not so much.
To me, not just grey but an ever shifting speckled rainbow colored static with a heavy bias towards grey.
:) Me too, but it seemed like the people who knew would know and for the ones who didn't "grey" was going to be close enough...
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#117You've found the right market. There's an awful lot of tech folk who don't read but want to feel like they do. I gotta rep my favorite though, even if it's typical. "Call me Ishmael." It's not the narrator's actual name - he just feels like an outcast. It sets the pace for the mythic and worldly talk throughout the book. A high bar with complete follow-through. I'm a total sucker for it.
I'm with the pedants on this one, in that I'd argue the prologue is inseparable from the novel, and the first line would be either be: "(Supplied by a late consumptive usher..." or: "The pale Usher-threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now." But straight fire either way. And, when it comes down to it, that "Call me Ishmael" is considered so consistently as the novel's opening line makes it the opening…
Can't argue with that! And what a prologue it is.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#118you should add closing line too.
That has the possibility of being full of spoilers.
Make it an option then.
sample: You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.[...] I been there before.
Attending Burning Man made me simultaneously one of the most photographed people on the planet and one of the least surveilled humans in the modern world.[...]I gathered Ange into a hug that started off stiff and awkward and then turned into the most familiar feeling in the world.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#119"Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond" (Things Fall Apart).
It's a line that does character, culture, and foreshadowing all at once without straining any of them.
Re: Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works
#120I implemented a lot of your suggestions, thanks for the feedback and enjoy the new version!