martes, 14 de agosto de 2012

(Top 10)* first lines/paragraphs of books

2 comentarios
 
A cada rato veo una lista de estas. Me gustan las listas, ya se han dado cuenta. Me gustan, especialmente, cuando puedo hacer mi propia versión de ellas. La mayoría de estas listas incluyen líneas de novelas que yo no he leído y que sospecho que nadie ha leído. Tampoco incluyen ninguna en español, y si las incluyen, pues las traducen al inglés, un pecado mayor para mí, snob que soy, pues he aprendido idiomas solo para poder leer libros en su idioma original (case in point: italiano).

Pero, bueno, el punto es que…hay muchas listas de estas, y aquí está la mía. No son solo 10. No son las mejores. Ni las más bonitas. Algunas ni siquiera son solo una línea, porque se merecían todo el primer párrafo. Pero, son las que más me gustan. Lamento si no soy lo suficientemente elevada para ustedes. Y si soy demasiado elevada, pues también lo lamento. Bueno, quizás eso no lo lamento tanto.
 
  1. Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. – Cien Años de Soledad, Gabriel García Márquez.
  2. I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years – The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini.
  3. I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. – A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving.
  4. El día en que lo iban a matar, Santiago Nasar se levantó a las 5.30 de la mañana para esperar el buque en que llegaba el obispo. Crónica de una muerte anunciada, Gabriel García Márquez 
  5. If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. — A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket
  6. Mr and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense. — Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K Rowling. 
  7. A  story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. — The End of the Affair, Graham Greene.
  8. En algún lugar de La Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero ni acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor. — Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
  9. It was a pleasure to burn. — Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury.
  10. Nunca se sabrá cómo hay que contar esto, si en primera persona o en segunda, usando la tercera del plural o inventando continuamente formas que no servirán de nada. Si se pudiera decir: yo vieron subir la luna, o: nos me duele el fondo de los ojos, y sobre todo así: tú la mujer rubia eran las nubes que siguen corriendo delante de mis tus sus nuestros vuestros sus rostros. Qué diablos. — Las babas del Diablo, Julio Cortázar. 
  11. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. — The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.
  12. En todo momento supe que lo que hacía era horroroso, pero lo hice. — El décimo infierno, Mempo Giardinelli.
  13. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. — Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy.
  14. Y al siguiente día no murió nadie. — Las intermitencias de la muerte, José Saramago.
  15. If  you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. — The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger.
  16. 2 de noviembre. He sido cordialmente invitado a formar parte del realismo visceral. Por supuesto, he aceptado. No hubo ceremonia de iniciación. Mejor así. — Los detectives salvajes, Roberto Bolaño.
  17. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. —Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. 


Hice trampa con un par, archirequeterecontra conocidas, pero no las podía dejar por fuera. ¿Alguna otra sugerencia? ¿Cuál me hace falta?

2 comentarios:

  1. Well, no Google cheating either:

    There was Eru, the One, who in Arda was called Illuvatar; and he made the first Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.
    --- The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien

    In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
    --- The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien

    When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.
    --- The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien


    Those are three opening lines to books I'm very fond of and know about half a billion people, at least, who would agree ;p just ask Anne ;)

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  2. Why three Tolien? :p You've got no imagination. And the first one DOES NOT make me want to read The Silmarillion.

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