Booked By Three: My Answers

3 Titles:

1. Nibbled to Death by Ducks, a mystery by R. Wright Campbell. I became enthralled with this book when I ordered it for the library many years ago, though I've never read it.
2. Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem. Who could resist a book with a title like that? It's science fiction and I enjoyed it a lot.
3. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. It really put a picture in my mind for this memoir.

3 Characters:

1. Cat from Joan Vinge's Psion, Catspaw, and Dreamfall. Cat is the character I wish I'd written.
2. Vincent Rubio in Eric Garcia's Anonymous Rex and Casual Rex. How could anyone not like a dinosaur detective?
3. John Rain, protagonist of Barry Eisler's Hard Rain and Rain Fall. I really like this good guy/assassin.

A runner-up is Wen Spencer's Ukiah Oregon from Alien Taste, et al. He's just not like other characters. And Isserley from Michel Faber's Under the Skin was memorable, too. Actually, narrowing down memorable characters to just 3 is harder for me than the other questions.

3 Opening Lines:

1. He drank alone. (Armor, a military science fiction book by John Steakley)
   I like this one because the first line is also the entire first paragraph and it's so simple and yet so complex.
2. Once you get past the overall irony of the situation, you realize that killing a guy in the middle of his own health club has a lot to recommend it. (Hard Rain by Barry Eisler)
3. And a classic: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. (1984 by George Orwell.