Monday Morning Mock Drafts: Big Intro!

Guten Tag, Drones.

Taking a break from attempting to remove rodents from various pieces of water-sports (points at Balls:  not one word) equipment and watching Hellesuck destroy any hopes and dreams Litre might once have had to put together this morning’s work week distraction.

Seriously, Hellebuyck, suck more why don’t you?

Today’s topic comes from Yeah Right, who when not reading recipes is reading books.  Last night he suggested something like “best opening lines of a book” and I said, “hell yeah, another week I don’t have to do any thinking!”

So that’s what you’re drafting, opening lines from any book you think worthy of consideration.  ideally the draftee should be the first sentence, and only the first sentence, but I’m willing to consider 2-3 lines if they really bring that certain Jenny say Qua, or whatever it is the French are yapping about.

Yeah Right is taking the opening line of John Steinbeck’s ‘Cannery Row’ which I forgot but, being an erudite fellow, I happen to have a copy of, so here you are:

“Steinbeck’s epic California novels deconstruct the visionary and edenic West.”

Well, that kind of sucks.  Not sure what Yeah Right is thi…

Oh.  Oh that’s the introduction.  Never mind.  Way to grab the reader for Penguin Classics, Susan Shillinglaw.  Susan goes on like this for 20 pages.  I bet she killed it in English 101.

The actual opening line is as follows:  “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”

Also there are dames, but you have to (and by all mean should) read the book to get to that part.

For my pick I will take what I think is the only possibility for #1 in this draft, even more than, say, not making Jamarcus Russell the #1 in a professional football draft, and take Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’:  “Call me Ishmael.”

There’s a sentence that grabs you by the lapels and screams at you to read hundreds of pages about man’s Promethean need to fight his gods, and also a lot of stuff about whales that doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the story.

The rest of you are on the clock.

 

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BeefReeferLives

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

scotchnaut

Harry Potter and the Shovel of Destiny?

Doktor Zymm

Speaking of books I need to reread:
“Callahan’s Place was pretty lively that night. Talk fought Budweiser for mouth space all over the joint, and the beer nuts supply was critical.”

BeefReeferLives

“I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station.”

Doktor Zymm

I’ve tried to read that book like 3 times and never finished it

Gatoraids

I am an invisible man.

Gumbygirl

I can see you.

ballsofsteelandfury

Oh, that’s the good stuff! Hook it to my veins!

But WTF are they wearing on their knees?

Doktor Zymm

Oh, looking back through some books I’ve enjoyed, this one has a good opening
“ALL NIGHTS should be so dark, all winters so warm, all headlights so dazzling.”

yeah right

“The Donnybrook is a three-day bare-knuckle tournament held on a thousand-acre plot out in the sticks of southern Indiana. Twenty fighters. One wire-fence ring. Fight until only one man is left standing while a rowdy festival of onlookers—drunk and high on whatever’s on offer—bet on the fighters.”

Gatoraids

inspired of my favorite web comics Achewood’s Great Outdoor Fight Sequence

achewood_poster_NEO-P-G43-18_larger_1357771919_1024x1024
yeah right

Donnybrook by Frank Bill.

It’s a hell of a ride.

BrettFavresColonoscopy

For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops. Sooner or later, one day, this pounding action will cease of its own accord, and the blood will begin to run toward the body’s lowest point, where it will collect in a small pool, visible from outside as a dark, soft patch on ever whitening skin, as the temperature sinks, the limbs stiffen and the intestines drain.

Gumbygirl

Cheerful.

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

2. “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Gatoraids

easy shoe in for a poem but can’t leave POE out
“the thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge”

Doktor Zymm

Tell-tale Heart is also pretty great:
“TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”

yeah right

“The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.”

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

Since I was too late to claim Fear and Loathing, and we’re freshly home after a trip to Bath, I’ll let the Dr. Mrs. put in my #1 pick:

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

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

Don’t even joke, dude. Within 48 hours of our arrival here she had already fired it up.

Doktor Zymm

Vacation dust is the worst because you know it isn’t *your* skin cells obviously

Doktor Zymm

Not a draft pick, but totally relevant

Snoopys-Dark-and-Stormy-Night-Second-Line
Doktor Zymm

And the term ‘purple prose’!

BeefReeferLives

“It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”

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