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  1. Quote

    | 316 notes
    It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The one everyone knows (and quotes). Parodied, spoofed, and misremembered, Austen’s celebrated zinger remains the archetypal First Line for an archetypal tale. Only Dickens comes close, with the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light etc…

    Jane Austen
    Pride and Prejudice (1813)

    The 10 best first lines in fiction

    Our guide to the greatest opening lines of novels in the English language, from Jane Austen to James Joyce

  2. Quote

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    This being Urban Dictionary, there are of course lots of naughtier ones, including the most recherche slang for cocaine I’ve ever heard in the form of “Walt Whitman” – he wrote long lines, see? And then there’s the felicitous “Hemingway”, a verb meaning to write an essay under the influence of alcohol. I think he would have been proud of that one. JK Rowling might be less happy about hers: some belletrist has proposed the children’s author’s name as a marvellously inappropriate if semantically sly term for “being under the effects of cannabis (jay) and ketamine (kay): JK Rowling. Ex: Man, I’m rowling so hard right now. Hermione Hoby unpicks how the Urban Dictionary is redefining literature’s biggest names – add your suggestions for the canon redux

    (Source: )

  6. Photo

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    Photograph: Anna and Elena Balbusso Striking illustrations from a new edition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: As we wait in our double line, the door opens and two more women come in, both in the red dresses and white wings of the Handmaids. One of them is vastly pregnant; her belly, under her loose garment, swells triumphantly. There is a shifting in the room, a murmur, an escape of breath; despite ourselves we turn our heads, blatantly, to see better; our fingers itch to touch her. She’s a magic presence to us, an object of envy and desire, we covet her. She’s a flag on a hilltop, showing us what can still be done: we too can be saved.

    Photograph: Anna and Elena Balbusso

    Striking illustrations from a new edition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale:

    As we wait in our double line, the door opens and two more women come in, both in the red dresses and white wings of the Handmaids. One of them is vastly pregnant; her belly, under her loose garment, swells triumphantly. There is a shifting in the room, a murmur, an escape of breath; despite ourselves we turn our heads, blatantly, to see better; our fingers itch to touch her. She’s a magic presence to us, an object of envy and desire, we covet her. She’s a flag on a hilltop, showing us what can still be done: we too can be saved.

    (Source: )

  7. Quote

    | 36 notes
    Hitchens seemed deliberately to choose enemies who could answer back, such as Henry Kissinger, the Clintons, Mother Teresa and Gore Vidal, while his friends could not, such as Jefferson, Paine and Orwell. In an age when opinion is customarily terse and glib, Hitchens was Georgian and orotund. His odyssey from International Socialism to Vanity Fair, from opposing the Vietnam war to loving the Iraq one, was accompanied by a shameless self-confidence and a fusillade of justificatory references.

    Christopher Hitchens: a fearless master-stylist and a pain in the neck

    The Hitch remembered by Simon Jenkins

    (Source: )

  8. Douglas Coupland

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    Illustration by Graham Roumieu

    Illustration: Graham Roumieu

    From Douglas Coupland’s latest book, Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People:

    With a demented cackle, he walked away as the trash burned. Then he burst into a military marching song: I’m a juice box, I’ve been told. Doom and mayhem good as gold. Don’t you ever mess with me. I will steep your bones for tea 1. 2. 3. 4. Juice box guts are on the floor. 5. 6. 7. 8. Death and I are on a date.

    See more of the illustrations in our gallery

  10. The reading of Catch-22

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    Chris Cox on having finally read Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 ahead of its 50th anniversary this week:

    I’ve owned a copy for years. But let’s face it, it’s 500-plus pages long, there are more than 50 characters, and everybody knows what a Catch-22 is – it’s one of those things where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So did I really need to bother reading it at this late stage?

    Well, having arrived 50 years late to the party, I’m pleased to finally be able to answer that question with a wide-eyed, emphatic, rapturous yes.

    That one book on the shelf you’ve always meant to read - what’s your Catch-22?

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