Last night we were introduced to a new game.  It sounded way too intellectual and I was prepared to hate it, but it turned out to be just challenging enough to be loads of fun.  There were four of us playing but I think it could be played by as many as eight or ten.

This is how it works.  The first person chooses a book and challenges everyone to write an ‘appropriate’ first line for it.  While the others each write on their own sheet of paper, the chooser copies the actual first line from the book.  Finished papers, folded in half for secrecy are then given to the chooser who mixes them up a bit and then reads each aloud without identifying the writers or the real sentence.

Our first book was Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.  We had all heard of it but only two of us had read it (forty years ago).  Familiarity with the book is not a prerequisite to the game and, as it turned out, did not seem to be helpful anyway.  These were the ‘first lines’ from which we were to choose the real one:

1.  Summer had waned, the last warm days giving way to the sodden chill if a typical English autumn.
2. The black draped carriage drawn by six matched bays drove slowly up the winding birch lined lane toward the large house in the distance.
3. On an eve in the latter part of May, a middle aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.
4. The wind moaned across the moors.

For that round, #2 received two votes; #4 received one vote; the real first line was #3.  Scoring goes like this:  You get one point each time the line you wrote is chosen; you get one point if you choose the real first line; the “chooser” gets a point if no one can identify the real first line.

The game can be played using the last line of a book, too.  For Main Street by Sinclair Lewis we wrote:

1.  And so they went about their business, all of a piece.
2. When all is said and done, though, it’s Main Street that is the heart, the soul, the everything to me.
3. Delaney saw that his life had been a complete failure as the streetcar bore down on his unmoving body.
4. Say, did you notice whether the girl got that screwdriver back?

In this case, #4 was the actual final sentence in Main Street and not a single one of us got it!

Our other book choices included Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, The Real Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Casmus, Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo, and Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.  But any book would do fine – even a children’s book.  It’s a game I highly recommend!