Here and There

—There has appeared an interesting list of "100 best first lines from novels" here, and, in response, a list of "best last lines." I'll give it some thought, but I'm not sure I could better the first list (the second is still growing). I think I might add the opening sentence of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye: "The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of the Dancers." And I would certainly add, from Tom Sawyer:

"Tom!"
No answer.

"Tom!"

No answer.

It's not a novel, but "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres" from Caesar's Gallic War is a pretty famous opening.

—I finished my review of Ursula Schattner Rieser's L'araméen des manuscrits de la mer Morte. I am told that it will appear in the August 2006 issue of Journal for the Study of Judaism.

—I wanted to give a shout-out to Danny Zacharias for producing a nifty Unicode keyboard for Hebrew transliteration, available here. I used it in producing the review mentioned above; worked like a charm. Thanks, Danny.