Another One of Those Cat Updates, Plus A Random, Totally-Unrelated-To-Greece Digression

So Brad, my coworker here in Greece, has created a podcast about his experiences. His most recent episode is an interview with me, all about my cat. (Some of you are shaking your heads and muttering things about my cat obsession right now. But the podcast was Brad's idea, I swear). It's really exciting. I'm on itunes! So is my cat! You can download it here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/soundvoice

Also, while we are on the subject of things named 'Calypso', I'm going to reprint here the excellent first line of the book by that name, which happens to be part of Ulysses:

"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls."

The reason I mention it is, well, the American Book Review published a list of the 100 best first lines in literature, (http://www.litline.org/ABR/100bestfirstlines.html) which got me thinking. The following are some of my favorite first lines. Congratulations to anyone who can identify them:

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

"The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born - we weren't even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Fanny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lilly and Egg. "

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

Of course, this is all very problematic, as I am separated from my book collection in New York, and separated from the library, as it is Sunday, so there are definitely many more excellent first lines that I would include if I had the chance to dig them up. Plus, it's very difficult to separate the quality of the first line from the quality of the book itself. There are a lot of really great books that have so-so first lines.

For example, take this one:

"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."

Well, OK, if you have so much as glanced at the title page of this particular novel, you know that murder and psychological intrigue and all sorts of exciting things are on the way. But if, for example, the young man crossed K. Bridge for a gallon of milk and cat food, and then went home to watch the Super Bowl, that particular sentence would never had made anyone's list of top first lines. At least, it wouldn't make my list. I don't care much for stories about milk purchasing and football.

And then there's this classic line, which is effective, memorable, thought provoking, and in my opinion, utterly untrue;

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

As for last lines, well, I'd like to see a top 100 list of those. It seems to be truth universally acknowledged that this is the best of all time, and I might just agree:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

But I also really like this one:

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."