h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fun for the whole family, or at least all those who can enjoy a good book.

Each person should choose a book from the shelves, hopefully providing a mix of familiar and obscure volumes. One player commences by reading the title of their book and any "blurb" from the dust jacket. Everyone then writes down on a piece of paper what they think the first line of the book might be. Whoever read out their title writes down the actual first line of the book and collects in all the papers.

They then read out all the offerings and each player votes for the first line they find most believable. A point is awarded to a player for each vote his or her first line receives. Anyone who votes for the actual first line also receives a point. Bonus points are available for comical entries.

It's not as complicated as I've made it sound, but probably not best attempted when completely sober or completely legless. And if you can still remember the first line of "Ivor the Engine" - be proud.

I know this one - you can also actually BUY it in a box where they give you the line on a card...
This gives a huge variey of books,
and you can also do the last line of the book too...

That's great - I didn't know that.

It's good fun to play in the rooms of people who have extremely random collections of books; "Mythical Creatures of the British Isles" is a particular favourite of mine.

And it's much more fun playing with books people don't know well or at all...

the most amusing round I played involved the opening round to one of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet novels, none of us had read anything by him, but we all knew "My Family and Other Animals" and had preconceptions about how he would write. A more pretentious set of opening lines you never did see!

It's always a point of contention whether the best strategy is to try to be convincing and so score points when people vote for your lines, or to try to be funny and score comedy points. I feel that the funniest ones are often unintentional.

Surprising similarities to poker - you have to keep a very straight face!