Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello everyone,

inspired by the latest "What are we reading?" thread, I am going to put a selection of - hopefully recognizable, but not too easily recognizable - beginnings together and present them as a quiz to you.

Should post the quiz in an hour at the latest, I hope - in a new post in this thread.

All these are beginnings to English-language novels
(edit: by the following authors - in alphabetical order: Monica Ali, Margaret Atwood, Beryl Bainbridge, James Baldwin, Pat Barker, Alan Bennett, A.S. Byatt, J.L. Carr, Peter Carey, Bruce Chatwin, Jonathan Coe, Siri Hustvedt, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jackie Kay, Hanif Kureishi, Hilary Mantel, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Laurence Sterne, Sarah Waters)

Edit: Completed spoiler inserts for authors and titles (31 August).

1) Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it. Some quirk of the Kentish coastline makes Whitstable natives — as they are properly called — the largest and the juiciest, the savouriest yet the subtlest, oysters in the whole of England. Whitstable oysters are, quite rightly, famous.
The French, who are known for their sensitive palates, regularly cross the Channel for them; [...] (view spoiler)[Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet (hide spoiler)]

2) They order, said I, this matter better in France.
(view spoiler)[Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (hide spoiler)]

3) He said, 'Save yourself if you can,' and I said firmly enough, though I was trembling and clutching at straws, 'I intend to.' (view spoiler)[Beryl Bainbridge, Every Man for Himself (hide spoiler)]

4) I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
(view spoiler)[Pat Barker, Regeneration (hide spoiler)]

5) When the train stopped I stumbled out, nudging and kicking the kitbag before me. Back down the platform someone was calling despairingly, 'Oxgodby ... Oxgodby.'
(view spoiler)[J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country (hide spoiler)]

6) If there was a bishop, my mother would have him to tea.
(view spoiler)[Peter Carey, Oscar And Lucinda (hide spoiler)]

7) On Wednesday the bishop came in person.
(view spoiler)[Hilary Mantel, Fludd (hide spoiler)]

8) At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber.
(view spoiler)[Alan Bennet, The Uncommon Reader (hide spoiler)]

9) I pull back the curtain an inch and see their heads bent together. I have no idea how long they have been there. It is getting dark. I keep expecting them to vanish; then I would know that they were all in my mind. I would know that I imagined them just as surely as I imagined my life. But they are still there, wearing real clothes, looking as conspicuous as they please. Each time I look at the photographs in the papers, I look unreal. I look unlike the memory of myself. I feel strange now. It used to be such a certain thing, just being myself. It was so easy, so painless.
(view spoiler)[Jackie Kay, Trumpet (hide spoiler)]

10) Sometime after he said the word pause, I went mad and landed in the hospital.
(view spoiler)[Siri Hustvedt, The Summer Without Men (hide spoiler)]

11) Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once.
(view spoiler)[Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (hide spoiler)]

12) I have lost count of the days that have passed since I fled the horrors of Vasco Miranda's mad fortress in the Andalusian mountain-village of Benengeli; ran from death under cover of darkness and left a message nailed to the door.
(view spoiler)[Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh (hide spoiler)]

13) It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.
(view spoiler)[Kazua Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (hide spoiler)]

14) In my grandmother's dining-room there was a glass-fronted cabinet and in the cabinet a piece of skin.
(view spoiler)[Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (hide spoiler)]

15) My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost.
(view spoiler)[Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia (hide spoiler)]

16) An hour and forty-five minutes before Nazneen's life began - began as it would proceed for quite some time, that is to say uncertainly - her mother Rupban felt an iron fist squeeze her belly.
(view spoiler)[Monica Ali, Brick Lane (hide spoiler)]

17) The damn'd blood burst, first through his nostrils, then pounded through the veins in his neck, the scarlet torrent exploded through his mouth, it reached his eyes and blinded him, and brought Arthur down, down, down, down, down.
(view spoiler)[James Baldwin, Just Above My Head (hide spoiler)]

18) Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going.
(view spoiler)[Toni Morrison, Jazz (hide spoiler)]

19) Tragedy had struck the Winshaws twice before, but never on such a terrible scale.
(view spoiler)[Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up! (hide spoiler)]

20) The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time. Its spine was missing, or rather protruded from amongst the leaves like a bulky marker. It was bandaged about and about with dirty white tape, tied in a neat bow.
(view spoiler)[A.S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance (hide spoiler)]

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "All these are beginnings to English-language novels:"

I was about to claim that I don't recognize a single one, but I think 5) might be (view spoiler)[ A Month in the Country (hide spoiler)]. Otherwise, I'd be surprised if any of the others are from books I've read, though I suppose there might be one or two ...

That's fine, Bill - at least to me. In fact, I am hoping that no single person will know all the answers, but that eTL&Sers will jigsaw it all together in due course.

Am a newbie to this: Should I comment on right or wrong solutions yet, or should I wait? Which is more fun?

Edit: I think there might be at least a couple more that you have read... these first sentences are not always easily recognizable.
We will see.

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "Am a newbie to this: Should I comment on right or wrong solutions yet, or should I wait? Which is more fun?"

I don't know how this should be handled. I'd probably hold off ... when @conedison used to put them up, it was always hours before I was online and most of the answers had already been verified before I saw the questions.

Since we're on Goodreads though, you could put individual answers in a "spoiler" so that only those who want to know can take a peek... In fact, I've gone back and edited my answer to put it under a spoiler alert so that it doesn't influence any future players.

Don't comment on mine for my sake, anyway; I just checked the book to see if I was right ... (view spoiler)[I was! (hide spoiler)]

Great idea with the spoiler alerts, Bill!

For those who would like to play it this way, you need to write (spoiler)title of your guess(/spoiler), but replacing the () symbols with <>.

Anyway, any posts welcome, be they with or without spoiler alerts!

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "any posts welcome, be they with or without spoiler alerts!"

Thanks for the quiz bl! Well, pathetic here, only recognised one, 13, from my gut reaction to it (confirmed).

Not sure I have read any of the others, but I'll find out when other people find them out! (Only looked up 9, 14, 15 and 17 because they caught my attention for one reason or another - I had never heard of 9 btw, so thanks for this too.)

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "All these are beginnings to English-language novels:

1) Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it. Some quirk of the Kentish coastline makes Whitstable natives — ..."

Congratulate me for a perfect score.
Perfectly bad. I don't recognize any of these!

I'm not good at this sort of thing... I had very few ideas, and those I did guess were wrong... in my defence, I have only read one of the books I checked (around 5 of them) - 13 - which I mis-identified.

I did read it a long time ago, and it didn't make a strong impression - that's my excuse, anyway!

The only one I recognise is 14 (and it took me a while to remember which book it was): (view spoiler)[In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin (hide spoiler)]

Well done, Bill, Hushpuppy, Gpfr with your spottings so far! (HP: I was pretty sure you, and others, would spot number 13! And 9 is a wonderful book.)

I am afraid I may be overachieving - I did not want the quiz to be too easy. Hmph. Obviously, I did not want it to be too difficult either! (I thought on compiling the set that I would have struggled with some of them myself, even though having read the books!)

Here are the authors' names (in alphabetical order), just in case that might ring a bell.

Monica Ali
Margaret Atwood
Beryl Bainbridge
James Baldwin
Pat Barker
Alan Bennett
A.S. Byatt
J.L. Carr
Peter Carey
Bruce Chatwin
Jonathan Coe
Siri Hustvedt
Kazuo Ishiguro
Jackie Kay
Hanif Kureishi
Hilary Mantel
Toni Morrison
Salman Rushdie
Laurence Sterne
Sarah Waters

As you can see, it is almost exclusively more recent fiction - as we had quite a few of the classics in this week's thread.

Edit: Have added these names to the original quiz post.

Only two which I read/re-read fairly recently: 13 and 19.
Guessed the author of 15, wrong book though.

Thanks, that makes some easier

12) (view spoiler)[ The Moor's last Sigh, Rushdie (hide spoiler)]
16)(view spoiler)[ Brick Lane, Ali (hide spoiler)]
18)(view spoiler)[ Jazz, Morrison (hide spoiler)]
20)(view spoiler)[ Possession, Byatt (hide spoiler)]

authors

2) must be (view spoiler)[ Sterne (hide spoiler)]
4) (view spoiler)[ Barker, one of her WWI trilogy (hide spoiler)]

Gpfr wrote: "The only one I recognise is 14 (and it took me a while to remember which book it was): [spoilers removed]"

Good the have you back. M.

Gpfr wrote: "The only one I recognise is 14 (and it took me a while to remember which book it was): [spoilers removed]"

Should I have got that one? it's my favourite book by that author, but I read it some 40 years ago!

CCCubbon wrote: "Good the have you back. M."

Thank you. Good to be back.

Robert wrote: "Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "All these are beginnings to English-language novels:

1) Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it. Some quirk of the Kentish coast..."
Ha, I got the same perfect score as you Robert. Although I did like no.8!

giveusaclue wrote: "Robert wrote: "Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "All these are beginnings to English-language novels:

1) Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it. Some quirk of th..."

I got a perfect nil points as well. Though with the list of authors up I have read books of at least eight of them. Perhaps I'm not much good at remembering first lines of books. I think the only one that comes to mind is "It was my eighty -first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite, when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me". So a mini quiz here. Anyone recognise my one and only? Apart for the Bible that is!...

Tam wrote: "It was my eighty -first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite, when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me"

Ha! With the two "bishop" lines in the quiz, I thought of that one from (view spoiler)[ Earthly Powers (hide spoiler)].

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

Ooh! I think I have two correct- well maybe- but not very confident.

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "Here are the authors' names (in alphabetical order)"

Well, I've only read 7 of the authors - a single book in all cases except for the one whose first line I knew. Of the remaining six, 3 are from the books I read, two of those 20 years ago or more.

5 and 6 rang a bell, and I guessed 13 correctly (but it's probably the easiest one there!). And you managed to shoehorn in two bishops, which is a feat (and a bad pun). ha.

Just three for me Nos. 5, 13, 20
( I’d read 20 again recently).

Belatedly got number 5 - half realised, then got distracted and forgot about it.
(view spoiler)[A Month in the Country - J.L. Carr (hide spoiler)]

Ha, doing pretty well here, as a collective! Not that many left. Love the bishop quotes.
@ Reen, yes, I tried to arrange the quotes fittingly, in fact I spun a little, though incoherent, story on putting them together.

May I swear for a moment? I had just finished almost all the spoilers for the solutions you found so far, including links to the books, but then inadvertently pressed "back" before I saved the edit. ****
So I will do it all again, in a minute.

Having scored a big fat zero, like some others - I can see from the list that I have only read eight of those authors, none recently - and as far as I can see, only the specific books by Coe, Kureishi and Chatwin. (I mis-remembered which Ishiguro I'd read earlier.)

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "I had just finished almost all the spoilers for the solutions you found so far, including links to the books, but then inadvertently pressed "back" before I saved the edit. ****
So I will do it all again, in a minute."

Sometimes it works if you press the forward arrow. I've done that once on GR: click on the "back" button by mistake at the end of a long message, and to my utter relief, it reappeared when I pressed "forward".

Hello quizzers,

I propose that this quiz will remain open until 31 August, just in case a few more eTL&S members will turn up and have a go, and then be closed once the new week's "What are we reading?" thread is up. Will also add the solutions that will still be missing by then.
If that does not seem feasible, just let me know.

Thanks, Hushpuppy, I do hope I will remember this next time. I had activated "caps lock" inadvertently and was too hasty with the back button. (Does anybody, ever, use caps lock advertently? - ah well, as soon as you start grumbling, you start thinking of exceptions: in Lucy Ellmann's , she might have used it quite often for THINGS - though I would use copy & paste for such instances.)

As promised, I have added the still-missing ones, and all the solutions are now posted as spoilers.

Any surprises?

One surprise for me was that, because I recognized none, I was sure I'd read none, when in fact I've read eight!

More pleasant surprise, is a Beryl Bainbridge to look forward to - thought I'd read them all, but don't remember reading the one you listed.

I think this is a shared experience for many here! (Even myself as the person who rummaged for the opening passages in the first place.)

Oh, I am glad you found a new one of hers in this way, and I hope you will like it! I did, very much. It was the first of hers I ever read. It was a present from a bookworm friend, a great fan of her writing. Actually, it might be another one for the TBRrP (to be reread pile)!