my day to indulge

I can already tell Wednesday is going to be one of my favorite days with this new blogging schedule of mine...list-mania day! What is it about making a list that's so gratifying anyway?!! If I had nothing else to "list" I swear I'd probably end up doing things like itemizing my clothes by dresser drawer or making alphabetized lists of my favorites soups. Luckily, it hasn't come to that yet.

Well, my planned list for today was my "potential reads" pile for the read-a-thon. By the way, you have signed up for the read-a-thon, haven't you? I'm serious...you DO NOT want to miss it!

Well, as has happened in the past, I've just got myself so dang excited about the whole idea of spending 24 hours reading, that I made myself a pile of massive proportions. Now a big pile of choices is good...want to be prepared for any mood, after all. But I think I surpassed the point of "reasonableness" by a mile. I've just been going through my current stacks and grabbing everything that appeals to me. Books go in and books come out. But far more go in.

So, I'm asking for your help in weeding it down a bit. Inspired by Dewey's latest Weekly Geeks theme, I've decided to post the first sentence from each book I've got in the pile. No, you don't have to know what book they're from. In fact, even if you do, try to ignore that fact. Instead, I just want to know which sentences intrigue you. Which ones sounds like they might be worthy of read-a-thon status? In the comments, just leave me the numbers of the ones you think I should leave in the pile. Thanks! (I should probably mention, or maybe I shouldn't, that in addition to these I have a few graphic novels and books of short stories in my pile.) Anyway, here we go...

1. Angus, our one-year-old, was busy smearing a mixture of scrambled eggs and peach yogurt in his hair and under his shirt when the phone rang.

2. When Dante Cazabon used his shoulder to open the double doors of the kitchen, he was concentrating on the mountain of soup bowls he carried on a tray in front of him.

3. Dinnie, an overweight enemy of humanity, was the worst violinist in New York, but was practicing gamely when two cute little fairies stumbled through his fourth-floor window and vomited on the carpet.

4. This is my favorite book in the world, though I have never read it.

5. Diagramming sentences is one of those lost skills, like darning socks or playing the sackbut, that no one seems to miss.

6. There had been no warning.

7. For decades, Tukwila, Kent, Auburn, Des Moines, and Federal Way depended on the Pac HiWay for their commercial sustenance, entertainment, and transportation to either Seattle or Tacoma.

8. It was in the year 1046, on a cold winter's night, when a fog, thick as wool and dank as a dead man's hand, crept up from the River Scrogg into the ancient town of Fulworth.

9. Charles Monet was a loner.

10. Imo set out one day to catch some fish, but there was no sea.

11. Today is the first day of winter, I believe.

12. There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

13. A midwestern town.

14. No live organism can ontinue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

15. The hooded figure stood motionless on Pennsylvania Avenue facing the White House.

16. Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a rabbit who was made almost entirely of china.

17. It is my first morning of high school.

18. Rain lashed through the hellishly hot Saharan sky, hurling itself groundward with chaotic fury only to evaporate before it made contact with the drying earth.

19. The ambulance came bobbing out of the Mercy Medical Center parking lot and swung south on Pine Street, its blue and red lights just winking dots in the bright noon sunshine and the siren echoing away into the cloudless blue vault of the sky.

20. It was the autumn of 1981 and I'd been asked by my paper the Leinster News to do an article on folklore and changing ways in Ireland, a chance I jumped at, availing myself of the opportunity to return home to Slievenageeha, which I hadn't been to visit in years.

21. My sweater was new, stinging red and ugly.

22. They say winter in the Northlands can chill the skin right off your bones.

23. When I was little, my uncle Pete had a necktie with a porcupine painted on it.

24. "Come on David."

25. At the time of his formal sentencing in Alexandria, Virgina, for eleven known murders, the former FBI agent and pattern killer Kyle Craig, known as the Mastermind, was lectured and condescended to by U.S. District Judge Nina Wolff.

26. "Let's get this party started, already!" Sabrina complained under her breath as she rubbed the charley horse in her leg.

27. In Generica, Kansas, Christmas wasn't something you felt in the chill of the winter air or the warmth of a generous smile.

28. The main difference between school and prison is that prisons release you early for good behavior.

29. Later, while I was facing the Potter Moth, or fleeing for my life from the First Ones, or helping man a cannon aboard Jack Havock's brig Sophronia, I would often think back to the way my life used to be, and to the last afternoon at Larklight, before all our misfortunes began.

30. I once believed that life was a gift.

31. It was 7 minutes after midnight.

32. I was born in this house, and grew up here.

33. Ten years ago, when I was living in a small flat above an off-licence in SW1, I learned that the big house next door had been bought by the wife of the dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle.

34. It is August 1854, and London is a city of scavengers.

35. I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped.

36. "Where to?"

37. When the blind man arrived in the city, he claimed that he had traveled across a desert of living sand.

38. They promised me nine years of safety but only gave me three.

39. An owl called, its shuddering hoots repeating mournfully in the distance.

40. The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faces east.

41. The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party.

42. Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance?

43. Rats!

So, which ones would keep you reading?

Edited to add:

Annie liked this idea, so she did the same thing on her blog. She'd love it if some of you would help her weed down her pile as well.