August Challenge, Day 10: Opening (Five) Lines from Five Favorite Books

This post should be titled, "Opening five lines from five favorite books on my iPad". My books are still in boxes so I'll be taking these lines from books that are on my iPad.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. "Then there was bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Cafe des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and smoke inside. It was a sad, evilly run cafe where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together and I kept away from it because of the smell of dirty bodies and the sour smell of the drunkenness."

Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson. "Call me Ishmael. I won't answer to it, because it's not my name, but it's much more agreeable than most of the things I've been called. "Call me 'that-weird-chick-who-says-"fuck"-a-lot'" is probably more accurate, but "Ishmael" seems classier, and it makes a way more respectable beginning than the sentence I'd originally written, which was about how I'd just run into my gynecologist at Starbucks and she totally looked right past me like she didn't even  know me. And so I stood there wondering whether that's something she does on purpose to make her clients feel less uncomfortable, or whether she just genuinely didn't recognize me without my vagina. Either way, it's very disconcerting when people who've been inside your vagina don't acknowledge your existence."

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. "The leather-bound volume was nothing remarkable. To an ordinary historian, it would have looked no different from hundreds of other manuscripts in Oxford's Bodleian Libray, ancient and worn. But I knew there was something odd about it from the moment I collected it. Duke Humfrey's Reading Room was deserted on this late-September afternoon, and requests for library materials were filled quickly now that the summer crush of visiting scholars was over and the madness of the fall term had not yet begun. Even so, I was surprised when Sean stopped me at the call desk."

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  "When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping."

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. "It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Baird's was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory. Mrs. Baird herself was squat and easygoing, and made no objection to Frank lining her tiny rose-sprigged parlor with the dozens of books and papers with which he always traveled.
     I met Mrs. Baird in the front hall on my way out. She stopped me with a pudgy hand on my arm and patted at my hair."

There you have it. I tried to pick a variety of fun-ish-type books. Yeah. I consider Hemingway to be fun. Geez. Oh. And sorry for the f-bomb but it wasn't necessarily out of my mouth since I was quoting from Jenny Lawson's book.

If you'd like to participate in this blogging challenge, please visit Natalie Grueninger's blog for prompts.