Quantum Thief by Hanny Rajaniemi

Details:

Published in 2011 by Tor Books.

I read it in 2012.

From the Publisher:

Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy— from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he’s confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him.

Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turnedsingularity lights the night. What Mieli offers is the chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self—in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.

As Jean undertakes a series of capers on behalf of Mieli and her mysterious masters, elsewhere in the Oubliette investigator Isidore Beautrelet is called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, and finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur….

The Quantum Thief is a crazy joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people communicating by sharing memories, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as MMORPG guild members. But for all its wonders, it is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.

First Line:

As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make small talk.

Alternate Covers:

Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce

Details:

Published in 1992 by Atheneum, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

1998, probably.

From the Publishers:

Young Daine's knack with horses gets her a job helping the royal horsemistress drive a herd of ponies to Tortall. Soon it becomes clear that Daine's talent, as much as she struggles to hide it, is downright magical Horses and other animals not only obey, but listen to her words. Daine, though, will have to learn to trust humans before she can come to terms with her powers, her past, and herself.  

First Line:

Each year, at the end of March, a great fair was held in Cria, the capitol of Galla.

Alternative Covers:

The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron

Details:

Published in 1996 by Penguin.

I think I read it in 2001.

From the Publisher:

Washed up on the shores of ancient Wales, the boy had no home, no memory and no name... he was determined to find all three.

This best-selling Tseries follows the adventures and training of young Merlin on the mist-shrouded isle of Fincayra, an enchanted land between earth and sky that is being destroyed by blight. With this land's inhabitants to guide him, the boy will learn that Fincayra's fate and his own quest are strangely intertwined.

He is destined to become the greatest wizard of all time--known to all as Merlin.

First Line:

It was the hand of a boy.

Alternate Cover:

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Details:

Published in 2000 by Houghton Mifflin.

I think I read it in 2004.

From the Publisher:

Kira, an orphan with a twisted leg, lives in a world where the weak are cast aside. She fears for her future until she is spared by the all-powerful Council of Guardians. Kira is a gifted weaver and is given a task that no other community member can do. While her talent keeps her alive and brings certain privileges, Kira soon realizes she is surrounded by many mysteries and secrets. No one must know of her plans to uncover the truth about her world and see what places exist beyond.

First Line:

"Mother?"

There was no reply. She hadn't expected one.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin

Details:

Published in 1813 by T. Egerton, Whitehall.

I think I read it in 2003.

From the Publisher:

For over 150 years, Pride And Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen herself called this brilliant work her "own darling child." Pride And Prejudice, the story of Mrs. Bennet's attempts to marry off her five daughters is one of the best-loved and most enduring classics in English literature. Excitement fizzes through the Bennet household at Longbourn in Hertfordshire when young, eligible Mr. Charles Bingley rents the fine house nearby. He may have sisters, but he also has male friends, and one of these—the haughty, and even wealthier, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy—irks the vivacious Elizabeth Bennet, the second of the Bennet girls. She annoys him. Which is how we know they must one day marry. The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and Darcy is a splendid rendition of civilized sparring. As the characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, Jane Austen's radiantly caustic wit and keen observation sparkle.

First Line:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Alternate Covers:

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Details:

Published in 1943 by Bobbs Merrill.

I think I read it in 2005.

From the Publisher:

When The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand's daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him.

First Line:

Howard Roark laughed.

Alternate Covers:

Stone of Tears

Details:

Published in 1996 by Tor Books.

I think I read it in 2008.

From the Publisher:

An Epic of Awesome Power

Kahlan has at last gained the one goal she had always thought was beyond her grasp ... love. Against all odds, the ancient bonds of secret oaths, and the dark talents of men long dead, Richard has won her heart.

Amid sudden and disastrous events, Richard's life is called due to satisfy those treacherous oaths. To save his life, Kahlan must forsake Richard's love and cast him into the chains of slavery, knowing there could be no sin worse than such a betrayal.

Richard is determined to unlock the secrets bound in the magic of ancient oaths and to again be free. Kahlan, alone with the terrible truth of what she has done, must set about altering the course of a world thrown into war. But even that may be easier than ever winning back the heart of the only man she will ever love.

First Line:

Rachel clutched her doll tighter to her chest and stared at the dark thing watching her from the bushes.

Alternate Cover:

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Details:

Published in 1995 by Scholastic Point.

Best guess, I read it in 2001.

Awards:

The Carnegie Medal.

From the Publisher:

In a landmark epic of fantasy and storytelling, Philip Pullman invites readers into a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall.  Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors.  First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe.  He leaves Lyra in the care of  Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her.  In this multilayered  narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title.  All around her children are disappearing—victims of so-called "Gobblers"—and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being.  And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.

First Line:

Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.

Alternate Covers:

Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis

Details:

Written with Larry Sloman, published in 2004 by Hyperion. 

I read it in 2009.

From the Publisher:

As lead singer and songwriter for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Anthony Kiedis has lived life on the razor's edge. So much has been written about him, but until now, we've only had Kiedis's songs as clues to his experience from the inside. In Scar Tissue, Kiedis proves himself to be as compelling a memoirist as he is a lyricist, giving us a searingly honest account of the life from which his music has evolved.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are that rare breed of rock band. Critically lauded and popularly embraced by millions of fans, their albums consistently sell into the stratosphere -- their CD Californication sold over 13 million copies alone.

Now in Scar Tissue, Anthony Kiedis defies the rock star clichs. In his telling, we can see everything he has done has been part of a passionate journey. Kiedis is a man "in love with everything" -- the darkness, the death, the disease. Even his descent into drug addition was a part of that journey, another element that he has transformed into art.

First Line:

I'm sitting on the couch in the living room of my house in the Hollywood Hills.

The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

Details:

The stories were written between 1983 and 1990. It was published in English by Knopf in 1993.

I read it in 2009 for an intro to fiction writing class. 

From the Publisher:

With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.

By turns haunting and hilarious, The Elephant Vanishes is further proof of Murakami's ability to cross the border between separate realities -- and to come back bearing treasure.

First Line:

I'm in the kitchen cooking spaghetti when the woman calls.

Alternate Covers:

Pure by Rebbecca Ray

Details:

Published in 2000 by Grove Press.

Best guess, I read it in 2002.

From the Publisher:

A sensational and accomplished novel that made its young author one of the most talked about in Britain last year, Pure is about fourteen -- the age when you know everything, except when you don't know anything. It's about first love and the end of innocence in all its passion and absurdity. It's about the raw transition between loving your parents as a child and understanding them as an adult. It's about the cool friend for whom everything seems effortless, and the impossibly embarrassing friend you're nice to when your cool friends can't see. It's about the struggle between desire and duty, and about a chance meeting with a twenty-seven-year-old man. And it's about what happens after. Pure has the shocking immediacy that made Less Than Zero so indelible. It evokes the brutalities of adolescence with the lucidity of Two Girls, Fat and Thin. It is sure to establish its author as one of the most remarkable and fearless young writers to emerge in recent years.

First Line:

I was about 13 when I started letting the boys feel me up.

Sandry's Book by Tamora Pierce

Details:

Published in 1997 by Scholastic.

Best guess, I read it in 1999.

From the Publisher:

With her gift of weaving silk thread and creating light, Sandry is brought to the Winding Circle community. There she meets Briar, a former thief who has a way with plants; Daja, an outcast gifted at metalcraft; and Tris, whose connection with the weather unsettles everyone, including herself. At Winding Circle, the four misfits are taught how to use their magic - and to trust one another. But then disaster strikes their new home. Can Sandry weave together four kinds of magical power and save herself, her friends, and the one place where they've ever been accepted?

First Line:

In the Palace of Black Swans, Zakdin, capital of Hatar: Blue eyes wide, Lady Sandrilene fa Toren watched her near-empty oil lamp.

Alternate Cover:

Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey

Details:

Published in 1912 by Harper & Brothers.

I read it in 2009 for "American Fiction 1910-1950".

From the Publisher:

Told by a master storyteller who, according to critic Russell Nye, “combined adventure, action, violence, crisis, conflict, sentimentalism, and sex in an extremely shrewd mixture,” Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic of the Western genre. It is the story of Lassiter, a gunslinging avenger in black, who shows up in a remote Utah town just in time to save the young and beautiful rancher Jane Withersteen from having to marry a Mormon elder against her will. Lassiter is on his own quest, one that ends when he discovers a secret grave on Jane’s grounds.

First Line:

A sharp clip-crop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage.

Alternate Covers:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling

Details:

Originally published as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Published in 1997 by Bloomsbury UK. I likely read a 1998 Scholastic (US) hardcover.

Best guess, I read it in 1999.

Awards:

National Book Award.

From the Publisher:

Harry Potter has never been the star of a Quidditch team, scoring points while riding a broom far above the ground. He knows no spells, has never helped to hatch a dragon, and has never won a cloak of invisibility. 

All he knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley--a great big swollen spoiled bully. Harry's room is a tiny closet at the foot of the stairs, and he hasn't had a birthday party in eleven years. 

But all that is about to change when a mysterious letter arrives by owl messenger: a letter with an invitation to an incredible place that Harry--and anyone who reads about him--will find unforgettable.

For it's there that he finds not only friends, aerial sports, and magic in everything from classes to meals, but a great destiny that's been waiting for him...if Harry can survive the encounter.

First Line:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

Alternate Covers:

Blood Meridian by Cormac MCarthy

Details:

Full title is Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West.

Published in 1985 by Random House.

I read it in 2007, I think.

From the Publisher:

An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

First Line:

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged shirt.

Alternate Covers: