spudtater | Bookshelfing

Because I had so much fun with the last meme, I've decided to set another challenge. I've picked a bunch of books off my bookshelf, and chosen arbitrary passages from each of them. Can you figure what book each passage comes from? Some of them are obvious, some a little more tricky. Most of the books are reasonably well-known. Oh, and I've blanked out some giveaway names.

Edit: Answers now provided! In spoiler-o-vision after each paragraph, so that latecomers may still entertain themselves. Comments now unscreened.

W------ lay back on the floor of the giant underground cage watching as the albino silently reloaded the tray, glided from sight. If the soldiers were dead, surely it was not unreasonable to assume that he would eventually follow. But if they wanted his erasure, surely it was also not unreasonable to assume that they had not the least intention of doing it immediately, else why tend his woulds, why return his strength with good warm food? No, his death would be a while yet. But in the meantime, considering the personalities of his captors, it was finally not unreasonable to assume that they would do their best to make him suffer.
Greatly.

AND

Then the sharks went mad. All around her, B-------- could hear them beeping and screaming and thrashing their mighty tails. Nothing can save me, B-------- realized. I'm a dead cookie.
Fortunately for all concerned save the sharks, it was around this time that the moon came out.
"There she is," shouted the S-------, and like lightning the S------- turned the boat and as the boat drew close the T--- reached out a giant arm and then she was back in the safety of her murderers while all around them the sharks bumped each other in wild frustration.
(The Princess Bride, William Goldman, guessed by zotz, sigmonster, shano_d)
'It says, "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets",' she announced finally.
Curiously enough, C---- had not remembered that the Fourth Commandment mentioned sheets; but as it was there on the wall, it must have done so. And S-------, who happened to be passing at this moment, attended by two or three dogs, was able to put the whole matter in its proper perspective.
(Animal Farm, George Orwell, guessed by gominokouhai, kalorlo, digitalraven, sigmonster, brucec, zotz, shano_d, xquiq)
3 And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi.
(The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith Jr... err, I mean, God, of course, guessed by figg, digitalraven, sigmonster, gominokouhai, xquiq)

[I have some wierd stuff on my shelves...]
He began to talk a lot of incomprehensible and dangerous nonsense. L----- did her best to stop the ears of her mind; but every now and then a phrase would insist on becoming audible. '... to try the effect of arresting my impulses,' she heard him say. The words seemed to touch a spring in her mind.
'Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day,' she said gravely.
'Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen to sixteen and a half,' was all his comment. The mad bad talk rambled on. 'I want to know what passion is,' she heard him saying. 'I want to feel something strongly.'
'When the individual feels, the community reels,' L----- pronounced.
(Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, guessed by gominokouhai, kalorlo, digitalraven, sigmonster, shano_d, xquiq)
There were a dozen or so. They were roughly the same size as the grazing creatrues, but leaner and grey-coloured, with horned heads and short trunks like elephants'. They had the same diamond-shaped structure as the grazers, but somehow they had evolved, on their fore and rear single legs, a wheel.
But wheels did not exist in nature, her mind insisted; they couldn't; you needed a axle with a bearing that was completely separate from the rotating part, it couldn't happen, it was impossible —
(The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman, guessed by andabusers, kalorlo, brucec, zotz, shano_d, xquiq)
As always, he marvelled that they could have crammed so much development into so short a time. That alone set them right apart as a different species — it was not simply a matter of maturing early; it was development at almost twice nomral speed. Perhaps they were a little light in structure compared with normal children of the same apparent age and height, but it was lightness of type, without the least suggestion of weediness, or overgrowth.
(The Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham, guessed by gominokouhai, digitalraven, shano_d, xquiq)
Before nightfall he saw away off on his left hand the long, faint shoreline of a great land, which must be Karego-At. He was in the very sea-roads of those white barbaric folk. He kept a sharp watch out for any Kargish longship or galley; and he remembered, as he sailied through red evening, that morning of his boyhood in Ten Alders village, the plumed warriors, the fire, the mist. And thinking of that day he saw all at once, with a qualm at his heart, how the shadow had tricked him with his own trick, bringing that mist about him on the sea as if bringing it out of his own past, blinding him to danger and fooling him to his death.
(A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin, guessed by kalorlo, sigmonster, zotz)
'Son, I said go home.'
J-- shook his head.
'I'll send him home,' a burly man said, and grabbed J-- roughly by the collar. He yanked J-- nearly off his feet.
'Don't you touch him!' I kicked the man swiftly. Barefooted, I was surprised to see him fall back in real pain. I intended to kick his shin, but aimed too high.
(To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, guessed by andabusers, sigmonster)
S------ was in some anxiety lest Mr N------ get to hear of the magic he had done at the ruined church at Flores de Avila. He made no mention of it in his own letters and he begged Lord Wellington to leave it out of his Dispatches.
"Oh, very well!" said his lordship. Lord Wellington was not in any case particularly fond of writing about magic. He disliked having to deal with any thing he did not understand extremely well. "But it will do very little good," he pointed out. "Every man that has written a letter home in the last five days will have given his friends a very full account of it."
(Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke, guessed by kalorlo, digitalraven, sigmonster, williamjm, xquiq)
So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk stated to believe that thrity-five percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. The man from the Monk shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that thte new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-taking Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating system errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of the old model.
(Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams, guessed by gominokouhai, digitalraven, sigmonster, williamjm, zotz, shano_d, xquiq)

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Date: 2007-04-02 08:09 pm (UTC)

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