First Chapter

I love First Paragraphs!   I bought this new board game to take with me over Christmas vacation, called  "It was a Dark and Stormy Night".  We were headed to our son and daughter-in-law's and I thought it would be a fun game to play.

Well, I  should have realized it would be fun for Sadie and me, not so, for The Handyman and certainly not for my son Marcus.   They gallantly suffered thru one game.  That was all they could do.
I bought it from  Bas Bleu and they say:
This is officially Bas Bleu's favorite board game ever! The concept is simple: Your opponent reads you the first sentence(s) from a work of great literature--categories include children's books, mysteries, nonfiction, novels, poetry, Shakespeare's plays, and short stories--and you name the title and/or author. Correct answers earn a cute little book token…collect eight and you win. The production value of "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" is top tier, from the wooden pawns and tokens to the "library card catalog" of clue cards. The difficulty of identifying the opening lines varies greatly; we think giving clues makes the game more fun. For adults, two to four players or teams.

examples:
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. --Gabriel Garcia MÁrquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude


When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable looking child ever seen. --Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

To be honest...it was very difficult...but Sadie and I had fun.  I kept saying to the  grumbling, sighing loudly, slouching men at the table, "but this will be nice to know if you're ever at a dinner party and someone brings up the subject of this book. You'll be glad you know this stuff."

Two things...
1. They didn't care.  They didn't ever think they'd be at a dinner party where someone would bring up  "The Secret Garden"  or  "100 years of Solitude" to  them.  Nor did they have any intention of 'remembering' that stuff.  (first lines of great novels)
2.  My friend  Brenda from Brenda's Canadian Kitchen teases me about using the term,  "dinner party."  So I just thought I'd throw that in there.

(for the record,  there is another book game I am going to buy soon, and make them play: Bookchase.  I think it's good for their characters.  Being well-rounded.  They are going to kill me.)

I digress again!

I'm joining in with Diane at  Bibliophile by the Sea on her  "First Chapter,   First Paragraphs" meme.
Every Tuesday, she'll be posting the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she's decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). Feel free to grab the banner and play along. 


This week, I just felt the need for something simple... a cozy mystery.  Something I can cuddle up by the fire to.  I haven't started it yet , so tonight's the night!
Here is my first paragraph  (QUICK!  Name the book and  I'll give you a game piece.  ):
Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift.  She might even have gone to her daughter's end of term pageant at Miss Edward's School for Girls, or 'girths' as CC liked to tease her expansive daughter.  Had CC de Poitiers known the end was near, she might have been at work instead of in the cheapest room the  Ritz in Montreal had to offer.  But the only end she knew was near belonged to a man named Saul.


from "A Fatal Grace" by Louise Penny.

The 2nd in the  Three Pines Mystery series.  




Wow CC!!   

Mean to her daughter and cheating on her husband, while not punishable by murder, certainly deserved something!!

I'll have to let you know how it is as soon as I finish.