i hate memes

but i like this one, because books are great. i stole it from laura. the deal is that i note the first sentence of ten of my favorite books, and you tell me which books they are from. here i define "of my favorite" as "favorite enough to be read more than once during the first year of graduate school." there are several more, but their first lines are either dead giveaways or paragraphs long. though it seems to me that some of these are dead giveaways, too.

1. claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away.
2. imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe.
3. when i reached C company lines, which were at the top of the hill, i paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.
4. may in ayemenem is a hot, brooding month.
5. on a january evening of the early seventies, chistine nilsson was singing in faust at the academy of music in new york.
6. my desert island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order...
7. the madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through.
8. she stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.
9. asking whether there is a liberal or conservative bias to the mainstream media is a little like asking whether al qaeda uses too much oil in their hummus.
10. i was born in the city of bombay...once upon a time.