This week, I’m back to school.  We don’t start classes for another two weeks, but I have lots of scheduling and meetings to tend to.  Since I’m starting to prep for my classes as well, I’ve been thinking more about “the classics.”  Today, I decided to share my top three opening lines. These are lines that float through my head from time to time.  I love how they manage to capture the essence of the whole book in one short sentence.

1. “124 was spiteful.”  From Beloved by Toni Morrison. This one is rather famous and wonderful for how it captures place (the address of the house) and a central mood of the work.
2. “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”  From Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.  This line comes to me every time I prepare for a party.  I love how much of Mrs. Dalloway’s identity is summed up in that one line.
3. “One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.”  From O Pioneers by Willa Cather. In this novel, Nebraska is not just the setting, but a character in its own right.  This opening sentence puts us squarely there in a instant.

That’s all for me.  What’s your favorite opening line?

There’s a meme that’s been going around Facebook, the “Book Dare.”  It’s been on for a while, but I only just received it.  Apparently, the BBC put out a list of one hundred books and said that the average bloke will have only read six.

Of course, we all rise to the occasion and say that we’ve read quite a lot more than six.  My brother found a story debunking the meme, but it was still fun to do.

For the top three today, I decided to list three favorites from the list:

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  I still re-read this around Christmas time and wish that I had been born a Marsh sister.
2. Emma by Jane Austen.  I love Emma  so much that I had secretly reserved the name for a baby girl.  Then stupid Friends had to go and steal my name.  And then, apparently, I wasn’t the only girl my age who had loved Emma.  So, now, I have no secret baby names. 
3. The Color Purple by Alice Walker.  One of the very few non-white books on the list, sadly.  I first read the book in college and now teach it.  Every time I read it, I find something new in it.  I love that about a good book!

Just for fun, here’s the whole meme, along with the ones I’ve read. How about you?  Did you get this on Facebook?  How many have you read?

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How many have you read?
How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice X
2 The Lord of the Rings X
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X (at least a good skimming)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare:
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurie
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaet Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams X
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy X
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis X
34 Emma – Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding X
50 Atonement – Ian McEwanX
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel X
52 Dune – Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons X
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt X
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession – AS Byatt X
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro X
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables — Victor Hugo X

We’re back from our little beach trip and have almost rid ourselves of all the sand.  Now that one vacation is over, it’s time to start planning the next one.  Last week, I listed the top three literary locations that I’ve visited: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grave, and Virginia Woolf’s London.  This week, I decided to plan the wish list for where I’d like to go next.  Here are the top three book-related spots that I’d like to visit!

1. Green Gables, Prince Edward Island.  Of course, any Anne fan has to want to make a pilgrimage here once in her life.  I imagine the place is awfully touristy now, but I’ve got to see it once!
2. Smith College.  I suppose only a real egghead would pick a university, but I have my reasons!  For one, I’d love to roam around in the special collections of the library.  Two, Sylvia Plath went here and taught here.  If you’ve been reading from the beginning, you’ll remember my Plath fixation.  Three, I read this lovely memoir about Smith, Ivy Days by Susan Allen Toth.  Thus, a little weekend getaway to Northampton, MA would be delightful.
3. Ouro Preto, Brazil.  Lastly, I’d love to see the landscape that inspired Elizabeth Bishop.  I’ve also mentioned my love for all things Bishop.  I’ve never been to South America, so I think this would be a wonderful introduction.

Hmm, now I want to start packing my bags! How about you?  What literary spot have you always wanted to see?

Today’s Top Three was inspired by Nat’s “Accidental Book Tourist” post at Book, Line, and Sinker.  She posted some great photos of literary sites she’s visited this summer. It got me thinking about my favorite literary sites.   There’s something about making that pilgrimage to where a writer lived and worked.  When we went to Jane Austen’s house, I could have sworn I saw her sitting at that tiny desk by the window, working away.  Especially when a writer infuses his or her work with a particular place, it’s wonderful to actually go there.

Here are my favorite three literary spots that I’ve visited.  I’ve got lots more that I’d like to see.  Perhaps that will be next week’s “Top Three.”

1.  Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home in Mansfield, Missouri.  Since I grew up in the Midwest, I think I got to many of Laura’s haunts.  This was by far my favorite.  It was only about an hour from our house, so we went up there more than once.  Rocky Ridge Farm is where Laura wrote all the books, plus you get to see all sorts of iconic artifacts, like Pa’s fiddle and Mary’s organ.  For any Little House fan, it’s a must-see.

2.  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grave in Rockville, Maryland.  When I lived in DC, I used to tutor several students near Rockville.  Sometimes, before or after a session, I’d stop by to see F. Scott.  I love that my favorite line from Gatsby is on the headstone:  “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

3.  Mrs. Dalloway’s London.  When I visited London a few years ago, I found a great map that traced Mrs. Dalloway’s morning walk.  It was wonderful to catch glimpses of all the moments in the novel.  Also, you get a sense for how privileged that character is by imagining the type of house she would have lived in.  It was my favorite day in London, and I highly recommend the walk to any and all Woolf fans.

What are your favorite literary destinations?  I’d love some good suggestions!