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Friday, December 31, 2010

first lines meme 2010

Once again, I thought I'd pull together the first sentence of every month on this blog. I do like going back and looking at old entries; it's narcissistic, sure, but it's also interesting to see what I was thinking -- and what I was writing. I tend to feel like I was better at blogging in the past, and sometimes looking back reminds me that I'm not a worse writer now, I'm just lazier. Which is true. Particularly towards the end of the year, they got much shorter, less detailed, and I think, less useful even to me when I'm trying to figure out whether I recommend a book I've read to someone or not (it's true -- I use my own blog for those purposes sometimes.)

Has anyone else out there ever laughed so hard they cried at a passage in a book that, upon inspection, others do not find so funny?

Six more weeks of winter, and so today I am breaking out the winter haiku plus one that reminds me to look forward to summer.

I have to say, as much as I enjoy the series, I am sort of running out of things to say about Ranma 1/2.

Some books are good.

Impulse buys.

It's probably too rarely that I review children's picture books here (um, I think I have done it once before).

There's something a little daunting about writing a review of this series so late in the game.

This is the first of a series, the Chronicles of the Necromancer.

And now for something completely different.

If you were not already aware (and very few were) we've been away for a week.

I. Heart. This. Book.

There has been a delay; I don't deny it.

I look at this and wonder if somewhere around the end of March I'd stopped paying attention to the first lines of my blog entries again -- it seems I must have. There appears to be a noticeable cutoff! Also, this exercise has confirmed for me that I am possibly a bit too fond of the parentheses, a suspicion I have had for a little while. Perhaps a parenthetical diet is necessary. Perhaps that will be my New Year's Resolution: Stop and Think Before Adding that Parenthetical Clause.

So here we go -- onward through year three. Happy New Year, everyone! May your 2011 be your best year yet.

4 comments:

Anastasia said...

I'm really fond of parenthesis as well, though I think this year I was even more fond of the dash-- like that! I've been actively trying to stop myself from using it so much, but it just WORKS with how I write! At least I've cut back on my use of semi-colons now, although they popped back up again when I was feeling particularly rebellious towards my profs (they don't like semi-colons, mostly).

Unknown said...

Ah, the semi-colon. What other punctuation mark is so maligned? I love it, myself; in fact, if anyone asked me, I would suggest it isn't used enough these days! ;)

I am also very fond of the dash. I think much of this has come from the fact that I write as I think, and things like dashes, semi-colons and parentheses are very useful in those cases. They express the rhythm of my thoughts.

Anastasia said...

Exactly! I write like I think, which is why there's so many danged exclamation marks in my writing, along with the semi-colons and dashes. :D

(I also start some of my sentences with "because" or "and," because I actually paid attention to my high school writing teacher who said doing that was okay as long as you did it for the right reasons! Actually, I think she was the one who introduced me to semi-colons, too. Haha!)

Unknown said...

Ha! The ship has long sailed on me avoiding the use of "and" and "because" and "but" to start a sentence. It is de rigeur with me. I probably do it at least once a blog entry, sometimes more. I noticed I've even started ending sentences with "but" which I'm pretty sure would send a couple of my high school teachers into fits. But [oh, see what I did there?] I also had an excellent one who approved, and even applauded, my tentative semi colon use. I wonder if he knew what monster he was creating... ;)