book meme!

I have had a moderately evil morning and am going to improve my mood through memeage.

1. Pick 10 of your favorite books or series.
2. Post the first sentence of each book. (If one sentence seems too short, post two or three!)
3. Let everyone try to guess the titles and authors of your books.

Hint: most of these are SF/fantasy.

1. A screaming comes across the sky. Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon, guessed by orbitalmechanic

2. "And by the way," said Mr. Hankin, arresting Miss Rossiter as she rose to go, "there is a new copy-writer coming in today." Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy Sayers, guessed by orbitalmechanic

3. It's almost impossible to pinpoint the beginning of a fad. Bellwether, by Connie Willis, guessed by ms_hooligan

4. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Neuromancer, by William Gibson, guessed by platypus

5. The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed sub-category. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, guessed by luckylefty

6. The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards. A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin, guessed by papilio_luna

7. Georges Leon held his little boy's hand too tightly and stared up from under his hatbrim at the unnaturally dark noon sky.

8. On Friday, August third, 1923, the morning after President Harding's death, reporters followed the widow, the Vice President, and Charles Carter, the magician. Carter Beats the Devil, by Glen David Gold, guessed by columbina

9. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain* Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov, guessed by columbina

10. "Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man." The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, guessed by elliptic_eye


*This one is a tiny cheat, as it comes from a novel whose author's foreword is actually part of the story, and this first sentence is from the "real opening" of the book. That information alone may be enough to tell you what it is.