Frustrating without a way to get to the list of works, because it's not clear when you've seen them all.
You start having to guess how many there are, based on how many you have seen and how many have repeated, and the distance between seeing ones you haven't yet seen before.
A problem made worse, the more quotes there are, as if you have N quotes, then you expect to see the one you see the most often approximately e.ln(N) times ( iirc, for large N ).
( Or put another way: given N items, you expect the gap between discovering the penultimate one and the last one to be N. )
Really cool idea! Add a possibility to send you tips for other books. Here is mine: "As GREGOR SAMSA awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect" Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
obligatory note that there's no great single translation for Ungezeifer. Vermin, pest, insect, arthropod, spider, bug, mouse, "animal unfit for sacrifice" all fit https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ungeziefer
After trying a lot, I only saw lines from books written originally in English.
Therefore, I assume I'll not see my favorite:
> Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.
My translation:
"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
This reminds me how much weight a great opening sentence carries. Some of them are memorable decades later because they establish the tone immediately
Frustrating without a way to get to the list of works, because it's not clear when you've seen them all.
You start having to guess how many there are, based on how many you have seen and how many have repeated, and the distance between seeing ones you haven't yet seen before.
A problem made worse, the more quotes there are, as if you have N quotes, then you expect to see the one you see the most often approximately e.ln(N) times ( iirc, for large N ).
( Or put another way: given N items, you expect the gap between discovering the penultimate one and the last one to be N. )
For reference, a famous Irish coffee-table (read: bathroom) book in a similar vein:
https://www.abebooks.com/Said-Duchess-First-Lines-Gemma-OCon...
And from a cursory few refreshes I didn't see the obvious one come up:
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Orwell, 1984
Really cool idea! Add a possibility to send you tips for other books. Here is mine: "As GREGOR SAMSA awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect" Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
obligatory note that there's no great single translation for Ungezeifer. Vermin, pest, insect, arthropod, spider, bug, mouse, "animal unfit for sacrifice" all fit https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ungeziefer
It was a dark and stormy night.
What about making it a daily style game where you have to guess which book the opening is from?
It would be fun if you had to guess what book it’s from
After trying a lot, I only saw lines from books written originally in English.
Therefore, I assume I'll not see my favorite:
> Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.
My translation:
"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
Nevertheless, García Márquez preferred Rabassa's English translation to his original!
There's an okay Netflix mini series of it, FYI.
this is nice, simple idea, but nice. I think the style of the site is also appropriate for what this is :)