Wiedergelesen (nach fast genau 10 Jahren)

Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

Vor 10 Jahren fing ich an, die Diskworld-Serie zu lesen, (und in meinen Büchern das Erstlesedatum zu vermerken), und ich hatte schon fast vergessen wie gut auch dieser frühe (fünfte) Band ist. Mal schaun, ob ich noch "Mort" und/oder "Pyramids" dranhängen kann...

Das Zitat könnte ich eigentlich auch als erste Sätze posten, aber von Pratchett hab ich schon soviele ..

There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people.

(Terry Pratchett, Sourcery, 1988)

In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks.
But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about
REAL WITCHES.

The most important thing you should know about
REAL WITCHES is this. Listen very carefully. Never forget what is coming next.

REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. They live in ordinary houses and they work in ORDINARY JOBS.

That is why they are so hard to catch.

(Roald Dahl, The Witches, 1983)

Erste Sätze

I don't believe in God, but I miss him. That's what I say when the question is put. I asked my brother, who has taught philosophy at Oxford, Geneva and the Sorbonne, what he thought of such a statement, without revealing that it was my own. He replied with a single word: 'Soppy.'

(Julian Barnes, Nothing to be frightened of, 2009)

Und das ist erst der Anfang. Eigentlich steht auf mindestens jeder zweiten Seite des Buches ein Satz, der danach schreit zitiert zu werden, wie z. B. der hier

"The Fury of the resurrected atheist: that would be something worth seeing..."

Oder diese zweite Hälfte eines Absatzes ungefähr im mittleren Teil:

We live broadly according to the tenets of a religion we no longer believe in. We live as if we are creatures of pure free will when philosophers and evolutionary biologists tell us this is largely a fiction. We live as if the memory were a well-built and efficiently staffed left-luggage office. We live as if the soul - or spirit, or individuality, or personality - were an identifiable and locatable entity rather than a story the brain tells itself. We live as if nature and nurture were equal parents when the evidence suggests that nature has both the whip hand and the whip.

Doch, mittlerweile finde ich das Buch nicht mehr nur "ein bißchen verstörend."

Erste Sätze

When a film is made, the first take is usually the best. I hope this applies to books too, because after discarding 17 bright descriptions of the way I made my very first entrance, on Saturday, May 27, 1922, I've decided to print the one I first thought of. I wish I could use the marvellous booming phrase that I heard from Orson Welles on the only occasion he ever directed me in a film, and "print - with enthusiasm!" But the truth is that neither I nor this book would ever have come about if nature had paid any heed to the convenience of my parents. I was "a mistake". My mother often told me so.

(Christopher Lee, 'Tall, Dark and Gruesome', 1977)

Erste Sätze

Der Mann, der auf dem ordentlich gemachten Bett lag, hatte sich erst die Jacke ausgezogen, den Schlips abgebunden und beides über den Stuhl neben der Tür gehängt. Dann hatte er die Schuhe abgestreift, sie unter den Stuhl gestellt und sich seine schwarzen Lederpantoffeln angezogen. Er hatte drei Filter- zigaretten geraucht und die Kippen in dem Aschen- becher, der auf dem Nachttisch stand, ausgedrückt. Und danach hatte er sich auf dem Bett ausgestreckt, die Pistole in den Mund gesetzt und abgedrückt.

Jetzt sah es in dem Zimmer nicht mehr so sauber und ordentlich aus.

(Maj Sjöwall/Per Wahlöö, Alarm in Sköldgatan, 1972)

Erste Sätze

A smear of fresh blood has a metallic smell. It smells freshly sheared copper. It is a clean and impersonal smell, quite astonishing the first time you smell it. It changes quickly, to a fetid, fudgier smell, as the cells die and thicken.

(John D. MacDonald, A Deadly Shade of Gold, 1965)

Erste Sätze

At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic.
I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves.

(Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip, 2004)

Erste Sätze