Booking Through Thursday: Conditioning

Today's Booking Through Thursday question:

Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?

I actually don't have an absolute on this. My books that I've re-read over and over (the Harry Potter series, anything by Jane Austen) are pretty rough-looking, although I prefer to think of them as "well-loved." A friend of mine once saw my copy of HPATPOA (my favorite HP book, and thus the raggediest of the lot) and almost had a conniption. I have some books that stay pretty pristine (usually hardbacks), but on the whole my books take a little wear-and-tear. Some of them even have - *gasp* - writing in them, a habit I got into in college. The only books I refuse to deface in any way are library books, because that's unfair to other readers.

More "Thriller"!

Wouldn't you know, after I posted last night's ode to the greatest Halloween song ever, this showed up in my Google Reader:

(via I Am Bored by way of mental_floss)

And here's a "Thriller" wedding dance, courtesy of Fyrefly:


Maybe next year I should do a "Thriller" Halloween countdown or something...
FYI: More book-related posts coming soon. I just started Paper Towns a few days ago and am getting through it pretty quickly. Because it's so awesome!

Thriller

I love Halloween. One of the best parts? All the "Thriller" covers and remakes that start popping up this time of year.

Exhibit A: This guy recorded 64 different voice tracks to create a completely A Capella version. It's amazing, to say the least.
François Macré - Thriller (reprise A'cappella 64 pistes)

(via Neatorama)

Exhibit B: A group of French students filmed this lip dub at their community college. What is it with the French and "Thriller"?

Lip Dub IUT SRC Rouen 2008
by arcanes-prod

(via Videogum)

Exhibit C: Well, I couldn't find the EXACT video I wanted for this one. See, at last week's football game, the opposing team's marching band played "Thriller" during their halftime performance, which was awesome enough.* But then, the entire band put down their instruments and did the zombie dance! Ashley and I were in heaven, and I actually stood up and cheered when they finished. Probably a no-no, given that they were, you know, the opposing team, but it was so incredible I couldn't resist. I couldn't find a video of that exact performance, but this one is pretty similar.


* Full disclosure: when we first saw the color guard, they were wearing black velvet cloaks with the hoods pulled up. I turned to Ashley and said (way too excitedly), "Do you think they're doing a Harry Potter-themed show?" To which she replied, "I was thinking Twilight." We are dorks. Dorks who enjoy marching band performances much more than football games.

Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Title: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Author: E. Lockhart
Genre: YA
Published: 2008
Pages: 342
Rating: 9 / 10
Challenges: N/A
Awards: None (yet!), but it is a National Book Award Finalist

Synopsis (from the inside cover):
"Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind."

My Review: This was an excellent book! I loved the character of Frankie. She's smart, sassy, incredibly clever; she also tends to make up new words:

"Mmmm," she whispered. "Now I'm gruntled."
"What?"
"Gruntled. I was disgruntled before."
"Why?"
"It's drizzling, there's nothing to do but study, the vending machine's broken. You know, disgruntled."
"And now, you're..."
"Gruntled."
She had expected Matthew's face to light at the new word, but he touched her chin lightly and said, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
"What?" Frankie didn't think it was a word. She thought it was - she thought it was what she'd later call a "neglected positive."

It was nice to read about a character who enjoys playing with the English language as much as I do, and this wordplay factors heavily into the story. Of course, not everyone appreciates this wit. From the same scene:

What annoyed her now was not that Matthew was right - but that he wouldn't just enjoy the made-up word. That he needed to be right. And that he'd chucked her - actually chucked her under the chin, like you do to a dog, when informing her that, essentially, her cleverness with gruntled had been completely trumped by his stellar memory for obscure bits of the dictionary.

Poor Frankie is really under-appreciated. All she wants is to be taken seriously, not just by her boyfriend and his friends, but by her family as well. The action of the story - the way Frankie infiltrates the boys' secret society, gets them to do her bidding, and deals with the consequences - is amusing, but not as great as Frankie herself. I loved watching her strategize and stand up for herself - I'm torn between wanting to be her best friend (if she'd have me) and wanting to be her.

Other Reviews:
bookshelves of doom
Michele

If you have reviewed this book as well, leave me a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

The Sunday Salon - 26 October 2008

Good morning, fellow Saloners! I'm still in recovery from last week's 24-Hour Read-a-thon. I have five reviews that I'm working on (two for the Book Awards II Challenge, which I am woefully behind on) and a few books that I'm still trying to finish. I've done a few other house-keeping-type things around the ol' blog, though. I updated my links list and added quite a few new blogs that I discovered as a result of the 'thon. I've also created a template for my reviews, which makes it easier for me when I upload them. And I'm getting ready for NaNoWriMo - my goal is to actually finish a novel this year!

So, short post from me today - I've got too much reading and writing to do! I will leave you with these two links, though:
A purse made out of books
30 second Tales of Terror

Happy Sunday! :)

Review: Enthusiasm

Title: Enthusiasm
Author: Polly Shulman
Genre: YA
Published: 2006
Pages: 198
Rating: 10/10
Challenges: N/A
Awards: None, which is a travesty.

Synopsis (from the back cover): "'There is little more likely to exasperate a person of sense than finding herself tied by affection and habit to an Enthusiast.' Julie knows from bitter experience. Her best friend, Ashleigh, veers wildly from one obsession to the next, dragging Julie along on her crazy schemes. Ashleigh's current fancy is also Julie's own passion: Jane Austen's great love story Pride and Prejudice. Dressed in a vintage frock and dragging her feet, Julie finds herself sneaking into a dance at an all-boys' prep school with Ashleigh, in search of heroes. Unfortunately, they both fall for the same one: the handsome and gallant Grandison Parr. Will Julie have to choose between loyalty and love? Or will Ashleigh's embarrassing antics drive him away before Julie gets a choice?"

My Review: I love Jane Austen. I have read all of her completed novels at least twice. I've read quite a few JA para-lit novels, and this is by far the best of the bunch. It includes allusions to not only P&P, but Emma, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, and even a little Mansfield Park, too. Although she borrows from Austen's characters, Shulman does a great job of making them (and the story) fresh and unique. There was never a doubt in my mind as to the ending (it is, after all, a romance, and a YA one at that), but getting there was so much fun! I wanted to read it all over again after I finished, and I probably will at some point in the future. I'm loathe to give out any details of the book, because I want everyone to discover it for themselves, but I will say that musical theater (more specifically, a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream) comes into play. There are also sonnets, chocolate turkeys, fun new words (like "igsome" - "ig" for short - which is used to describe something/someone bad), romantic mix-ups, and all the usual high school drama.

I bought my copy through Scholastic's Book Club, and if it's ever made available again I'll probably buy a few more. Even if you're not a fan of Austen, I'm pretty sure you'd enjoy this book - it's just that wonderful.

If you have reviewed this book as well, leave me a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

Booking Through Thursday: Coupling

I'm still trying to get caught up from the Read-a-thon; I have tons of reviews and a long overdue wrap-up post to write, but those are going to have to wait until after I finish grading this week's assignments and get my lesson plans under control. For the record: tenth graders find Julius Caesar incredibly boring, until you start comparing it to Mean Girls. It's amazing how easy it is to compare Ancient Rome to Modern Day High School.

Today's Booking Through Thursday question is:

“Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s just me.”

As a Jane Austen fanatic, I'm sure I'm supposed to name Elizabeth and Darcy or Emma and Knightley, but my favorite literary couple is actually Lady Jessica and Leto Atreides from Dune. Sure, the relationship itself doesn't last long - I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it and might possibly in the future - but the love between them endures to the final line of the book. She even gives him a son because she knows how happy it will make him. And he never even legitimizes their relationship! Which probably has something to do with my supremely screwed up ideas on marriage...

But you don't have to take my word for it. Check out Booking Through Thursday for more opinions.

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Twenty-Four

Title of book(s) read since last update: n/a
Number of books read since you started: 3, parts of 2; 4 short stories; 3 comic books
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce; The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman; "The Festival," H.P. Lovecraft; "The Watcher in the Mill," W.J. Wintle, The Ghosts of Charleston, Edward B. Macy and Julian T. Buxton III; Serenity: Better Days, Joss Whedon
Pages read since last update: 0
Running total of pages read since you started: 845
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 0
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 671 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge, softdrink's 10 list challenge, Tracy's Mini Challenge-Caption This Photo, C.B.'s short story mini-challenge, Carl's R.I.P. mini-challenge, Hour 21 drawing, Bart's giveaway
Other participants you’ve visited: J.C. Montgomery, Patti, Callista, Chris, Jen, Twigga, Laurie, Michelle, Bybee, Nymeth, Becky, Traci and Brandon, Alexis, gautami tripathy, Kimmy, Andi, Debi, Annie, Shannon, Jess/Pennie, Bart, Tammy, Heather, Heather, Wordlily, cCymraeg Ddewines, Jessica, Laura, Shauna, Laura, Brittanie, Annette, Paula Marie, L-squared, Ivan Girl, Yati, xicanti, Jenn
Prizes you've won: none (yet!)

Well, I pretty much gave up trying to read this last hour. I am SO SLEEPY. I decided instead to jump around and encourage everyone else. And now I'm off to bed, after I finish the wrap-up survey:

1. Which hour was most daunting for you? Probably this last one - I gave up on reading (WAY too tired) and just blog-hopped instead, to encourage anyone else still up.

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? The Twilight series, Uglies (although I never got around to Specials), graphic novels

3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Nope, it was awesome!

4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? I liked being able to go to The Hidden Side of a Leaf and find out what was going on for a particular hour.

5. How many books did you read? I finished 3, read part of 1, listened to part of 1, read 4 short stories and 3 comic books

6. What were the names of the books you read? Pretties, Bella at Midnight, The Ghosts of Charleston (I didn't finish The Graveyard Book or Harry Potter y la camara secreta)

7. Which book did you enjoy most? I loved The Graveyard Book, but I just couldn't stay awake listening to it.

8. Which did you enjoy least? None

9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? I wasn't a cheerleader, but I tried to visit everyone at least once. I think I got pretty close! :)

10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? Very likely! I will definitely read and probably host a mini-challenge

Great job, everyone! I had so much fun. Thank you to all of my cheerleaders who kept coming by and motivating me! You guys rock! :)

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Twenty-Two

Title of book(s) read since last update: Serenity: Better Days, Joss Whedon
Number of books read since you started: 3, parts of 2; 4 short stories; 3 comics
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce; The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman; "The Festival," H.P. Lovecraft; "The Watcher in the Mill," W.J. Wintle, The Ghosts of Charleston, Edward B. Macy and Julian T. Buxton III
Pages read since last update: 105
Running total of pages read since you started: 845
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 20 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 671 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge, softdrink's 10 list challenge, Tracy's Mini Challenge-Caption This Photo, C.B.'s short story mini-challenge, Carl's R.I.P. mini-challenge, Hour 21 drawing
Other participants you’ve visited: 0 this hour
Prizes you’ve won: none (yet!)

I took a break from novels to read the Serenity: Better Days comics. My only gripe is that there were only three of them. :) I was super-happy to see Wash again (I bawled when I read the spoilers for the movie, but when I actually saw IT happen on screen, I was more mad than sad). Anyway, this hour's mini-challenge is to visit Bart and enter his giveaway drawing. So go do it!

Happy reading to whoever's still out there. :)

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Twenty-One

Title of book(s) read since last update: The Ghosts of Charleston, Edward B. Macy and Julian T. Buxton III
Number of books read since you started: 3, parts of 2; 4 short stories
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce; The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman; "The Festival," H.P. Lovecraft; "The Watcher in the Mill," W.J. Wintle; The Ghosts of Charleston, Edward B. Macy and Julian T. Buxton III
Pages read since last update: 114
Running total of pages read since you started: 739
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 60 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 651 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge, softdrink's 10 list challenge, Tracy's Mini Challenge-Caption This Photo, C.B.'s short story mini-challenge, Carl's R.I.P. mini-challenge, Hour 21 drawing
Other participants you’ve visited: 0 this hour
Prizes you’ve won: none (yet!)

I finished my third book! I'm starting to get sleepy again, but I'm trying to fight it off - only 2 more hours to go. I think. Anyway, The Ghosts of Charleston was an excellent book. I love historical ghost stories - when I was in Girl Scouts, going to Savannah and going on the walking ghost tour was a Really Big Deal. I'm going to take a break from novels now and read my Serenity comics. W00t!

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Twenty

Title of book(s) read since last update: 2 short stories: "The Festival," H.P. Lovecraft; "The Watcher in the Mill," W.J. Wintle; The Ghosts of Charleston, Edward B. Macy and Julian T. Buxton III
Number of books read since you started: 2, parts of 3; 2 short stories
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce; The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman; "The Festival," H.P. Lovecraft; "The Watcher in the Mill," W.J. Wintle
Pages read since last update: 44
Running total of pages read since you started: 625
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 60 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 591 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge, softdrink's 10 list challenge, Tracy's Mini Challenge-Caption This Photo, C.B.'s short story mini-challenge, Carl's R.I.P. mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: Mari and Andi
Prizes you’ve won: none (yet!)

Well, I'm pretty sure I won't be dropping off to sleep again anytime soon...I just made myself a post-midnight snack of tomato soap, which was yummy, and I'm working my way through scary stories for Carl's R.I.P. mini-challenge. I read two short stories to begin, because I really don't own any scary books. I was a bit disappointed with Lovecraft; I've not read anything of his before, but from what I've heard I guess I just expected more. Maybe the story I picked just wasn't scary enough. "The Watcher in the Mill" was great, though. I read it right next to a window and had the uncomfortable feeling I was being watched the whole time. Creepy! Then I went tearing around my room, trying to find something non-pixelated to scare myself with. In the end, I came across an autographed copy of The Ghosts of Charleston that I've had for who knows how long. It's more historical than horror, but I'm still jumping at random sounds and keeping too many lights on.

Happy reading! :)

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Nineteen

Title of book(s) read since last update:
Number of books read since you started: 2, parts of 2; 2 short stories
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce; The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Pages read since last update: 0
Running total of pages read since you started: 581
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 0
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 531 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge, softdrink's 10 list challenge, Tracy's Mini Challenge-Caption This Photo
Other participants you’ve visited: Nicole, Care, Fyrefly
Prizes you’ve won: none (yet!)

...And I'm back! Thanks to everyone who has stopped by to encourage (or offer wake-up calls)! I can't believe it, but I just might make it through this thing. I decided to forgo The Graveyard Book for right now - I'm just too tired to be read to. I will be participating in C.B.'s short story mini-challenge and Carl's R.I.P. mini-challenge. Now I'm off to find some scary (short) stories...

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Seventeen

Title of book(s) read since last update: still watching The Graveyard Book
Number of books read since you started: 2, parts of 2; 2 short stories
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce
Pages read since last update: n/a
Running total of pages read since you started: 581
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 59 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 531 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge, softdrink's 10 list challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: Ashley and Laurie
Prizes you’ve won: none (yet!)

Just finished chapter three of The Graveyard Book - it's still amazing, of course. I'm getting really tired, though, and have decided to take a quick catnap. See you all soon!

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Fifteen

Title of book(s) read since last update: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Number of books read since you started: 2, parts of 2; 2 short stories
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce
Pages read since last update: n/a
Running total of pages read since you started: 581
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 43
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 472 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge, softdrink's 10 list mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: Chris, Nymeth, Dewey, Veens, Nise, Joanne
Prizes you’ve won: none (yet!)

I just finished chapter two of The Graveyard Book, and I am loving it! I actually laughed out loud while watching Gaiman read ("I'll eat your liver!" "Oh, no you won't."), something that doesn't normally happen when I read books. I don't know if it was really that funny, or if the expression on his face (and the accent) added to it. I ADORE the way Gaiman says "chocolate," though. He's used it in both chapters so far, and I'm really hoping it makes an appearance in the next six. My only problem is that it's getting past my normal bedtime and his voice is so soothing...I just drank a cup of coffee and will probably need to take a quick walk outside before too long.

Softdrink has posted a new mini-challenge - a 'thon-themed top 10 list! Here's mine:

Jessi's Top 7 Books Added to Her Wishlist Because of the Read-a-Thon:
7. In The Woods (read by raych)
6. I Was Told There'd Be Cake (read by Andi)
5. The Wordy Shipmates (read by Fyrefly)
4. Lessons Learned from the Freedom Writers (read by Alison)
3. Nation (read by Chris)
2. Magic Trixie (read by Andi)
1. Austenland (read by Fyrefly)

There would be more, but I'm eager to get back to Gaiman.

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Fourteen

Title of book(s) read since last update: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Number of books read since you started: 2, parts of 2; 2 short stories
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce
Pages read since last update: n/a
Running total of pages read since you started: 581
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 45 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 429 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge, Mid-Event Survey, Hour 14 question, Sharon's Very Min-Library Cat Challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: 0 this hour
Prizes you’ve won: none (yet!)

I just finished watching Neil Gaiman read chapter one of The Graveyard Book. I adore listening to him read - especially the voices he gives his characters. I just hope I'll be able to get through all eight chapters tonight...

Sharon's Very Mini-Library Cat Challenge asks:

1. Go to this website. Find on the map a library cat that lives/lived closest to you (there are library cats in Canada). What is the cats name? What library is/was it located in? The closest library to me (on the map, at least), the Twin Lakes Public Library in Milledgeville, which has two cats: Ashes and Creed.

2. Which library does Dewey live in? Spencer Public Library in Spencer, Iowa

3. What is the name of the library cat documentary film that Dewey was in? Puss in Books

4. What is Dewey's full name? Dewey Readmore Books

Now, back to Gaiman...

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Thirteen

Title of book(s) read since last update: n/a
Number of books read since you started: 2, part of 1, 2 short stories
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling, Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce
Pages read since last update: n/a
Running total of pages read since you started: 581
Amount of time spent reading since last update: n/a
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 384 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: raych, care, Alessandra, Lynda, Amanda, Rhinoa, Jodie, Patti, Andi, Wordlily, Fyrefly, Jess/Pennie
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

Since it's finally dark out (it's a little after 8pm here), I've decided to start watching The Graveyard Book. If anyone else would like to join me, here's where you'll find it. Happy reading!

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Twelve

Title of book(s) read since last update: currently listening to "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce
Number of books read since you started: 2, part of 1; 1.5 short stories
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling; Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley; "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Ambrose Bierce
Pages read since last update: n/a
Running total of pages read since you started: 581
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 40 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 384 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge, Kim's "walkin' and snappin'" mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: 0 this hour
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

Mid-Event Survey:

1. What are you reading right now? I'm listening to two Ambrose Bierce short stories from The Classic Tales Podcast.

2. How many books have you read so far? I've finished two, read part of one, and listened to one (almost two) short stories.

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? Either The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (which I got out of my car during last hour's mini-challenge break) or Specials (so I can finish up the Uglies trilogy).

4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? Nope! I had to turn down a few social invitations, but nothing that couldn't wait.

5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? My roommate invited a friend over for dinner, but she placated me with food and cake. I just looked at it like a break and got back to reading as soon as I could.

6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? I don't drink much caffeine, so I'm surprised at how awake and alert I've been feeling. I didn't get much sleep last night, but I haven't been tired or had the urge to take a nap all day. I'm sure I'll be passing out in a few hours, but for now I'm really pleased with myself.

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? I think it would be fun to organize a book club - if we could get everyone to agree on a book to read and write about for a few hours, just to see how our opinions differ.

8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? I think I did okay this year. I wouldn't mind having more snacks in the apartment...

9. Are you getting tired yet? Nope! (knock wood)

10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? I think taking that walk outside really energized me, especially since the weather is starting to get colder. Having an awesome roommate who makes you cake for no reason is pretty helpful, too. :)

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Mini-Challege Break!

Kim has challenged us to go out for a walk and take some pictures. Here are mine:

The cake my roommate made for me:


The pond near my apartment:


An interesting-looking tree:


Some honeysuckle blossoms:


It got progressively darker the longer I was out - pretty soon, it'll be time to watch Neil Gaiman reading The Graveyard Book. :)

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Eleven

Title of book(s) read since last update: Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley
Number of books read since you started: 2, part of 1
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling
Pages read since last update: 117
Running total of pages read since you started: 581
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 70 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 344 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, Icedream's book cover mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: 0 this hour
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

I finished my second book! Bella at Midnight was NOT the Cinderella tale I thought it would be. I quite enjoyed it. And guess what? Nimbus - one of my words from the Freerice.com mini-challenge - was used in the book! That made me smile.

I feel a lot better now that I've showered and changed. My roommate even made a cake, which I will post a picture of in my next update. She made a wonderful dinner of fettuccine Alfredo with scallops, mushrooms, and peas. I wasn't super-hungry, but it sure tasted wonderful! We have a whole pot left over for when I do get hungry again in the middle of the night.

Now I'm off to stretch my legs and complete Kim's mini-challenge. Happy reading! :)

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Nine

Title of book(s) read since last update: Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley
Number of books read since you started: 1, parts of 2
Pages read since last update: 94
Running total of pages read since you started: 558
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 43 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 317 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2, and I'm working on Icedream's right now
Other participants you’ve visited: Chris and gautami tripathy
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

My roommate just called to tell me that she's bringing a friend over for dinner. Right now. Which means I have to go make myself presentable and stop lounging around the living room being slothful. Oh, well.

Bella at Midnight is getting really interesting. I never thought I would sympathize with the stepmother and stepsisters, but I kinda do.

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Seven/Eight

Title of book(s) read since last update: Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley
Number of books read since you started: 1, parts of 2
Pages read since last update: 66
Running total of pages read since you started: 464
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 35 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 274 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge, Freerice.com 2
Other participants you’ve visited: Fyrefly, Andi, J.C. Montgomery
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

I decided to start reading Bella at Midnight next. I bought this from a Scholastic book club a few weeks ago. I'm the only teacher at my school who actually buys anything from them, but the librarian appreciates the free books I earn for her. :) It's interesting so far - it changes narrators each chapter, which is somewhat confusing but good because it gives you everyone's perspective.

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Six Part 2

Title of book(s) read since last update: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
Number of books read since you started: 1, part of 1
Titles of books read since you started: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
Pages read since last update: 0
Running total of pages read since you started: 398
Amount of time spent reading since last update: Does reading blogs count? Cause that's all I've been doing...
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 239 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge, Meryl's book quote mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: Alison, Debi, Traci, Amanda, jehara, Tammy, tanabata, raych, Sharon, Sarah, Lizzie, Sunny, Joanne
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

I took a bit of a break this hour. After finishing my first book (huzzah!) I decided to spend some time blog-hopping and cheerleading. NOW I'm going to make lunch - Sarah has given me a craving for a tuna salad sandwich, stat.

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Six

Title of book(s) read since last update: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
Number of books read since you started: parts of 2
Pages read since last update: 125
Running total of pages read since you started: 273
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 64 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 239 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: Veens, Nymeth, Wordlily, Trish, Aerin, Rob
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

I missed my hourly update for Hour Five because I got so into Pretties, but I have my first book finished! I read for an hour straight, which was really relaxing. Now I'm going to take a short break, visit some blogs, have some lunch, and then get started on my next book.

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Four

Title of book(s) read since last update: Pretties, Scott Westerfield; Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling
Number of books read since you started: part of 2
Pages read since last update: only 28 :(
Running total of pages read since you started: 273
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 60 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 175 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge, Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: none this hour
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

For Sarah's mini-challenge, I decided to read my copy of Harry Potter y la camara secreta. I only read a few chapters (reading in Spanish is a lot harder than reading in English), but it was nice to get another challenge done and to take a break from Pretties (even though I love the book and can't wait to finish it!).

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Three

Title of book(s) read since last update: still on Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
Number of books read since you started: part of 1
Pages read since last update: 73
Running total of pages read since you started: 245
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 30 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 115 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Freerice.com mini-challenge and I'm about to start on Sarah's foreign language mini-challenge
Other participants you’ve visited: Angela, Iliana, Trish, Callista, Wordlily, Alessandra, Wendy, chainreader, Becky, shelburns
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!), but I was a Reader of the Hour, which was pretty sweet

Before I start reading my foreign language book for Sarah's challenge, I wanted to share a quote from Pretties that I absolutely adored (WARNING: may be spoilery if you haven't read the series):

"Why am I unhappy?" Tally repeated softly. "Because the city makes you the way they want to you be, Peris. And I want to be myself. That's why."
He squeezed her shoulder and gave her a sad look. "But people are better now than they used to be. Maybe they have good reasons for changing us, Tally."
"Their reasons don't mean anything unless I have a choice, Peris. And they don't give anyone a choice."

Hooray for sticking it to the man!

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour Two

The current mini-challenge is to go to this website and test your vocabulary knowledge to earn free rice. I played until I got to 2,000 grains and learned a bunch of new words that I will probably forget in a few minutes. Did you know that nimbus is actually a word? I thought J.K. Rowling made it up. :)

Now I really need to get back to reading. Thanks to everyone who dropped by to encourage me - it really means a lot! I'll be coming to visit all of you soon...

Happy reading!

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour One Wrap-Up..Again

Title of book(s) read since last update: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
Number of books read since you started: part of 1
Pages read since last update: 92
Running total of pages read since you started: 172
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 40 minutes
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 85 minutes
Mini-challenges completed: Does the meme below count? If so, 1 by the end of this post. :)
Other participants you’ve visited: Fyrefly, Michelle, Sally and Amy, Nymeth, gautami tripathy
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

I've worked out a system - I saved a template that includes the above list, my running page count, and running reading time. Now I can just copy and paste every time I do an update! Apparently, I started an hour early. Oops. I guess this just means I'll have to finish an hour early tomorrow. Oh, well. Dewey has posted a meme for us complete for this "first" hour:

Where are you reading from today? My apartment. Mostly the daybed in my living room that serves as a couch. My roommate doesn't know it, but I commandeered her Fuzzy Poodle Blanket to keep me warm while I'm reading.

3 facts about me …
1. I can say a completely useless phrase ("I am a big duck.") in 10 different languages. It started as a joke in high school, and sort of mutated from there... [UPDATE: Deb asked which languages. They are: English (obvs), Spanish, French, German, Russian, Latin, Italian, Hindi, Cambodian, and Japanese. If anyone else knows another language not on that list and would like to teach me how to say "I'm a big duck" in that language, please do!]
2. I have read three different versions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone: American, British, and Spanish
3. Even though I have lived in Georgia all my life, I cannot stand the taste of sweet tea. Apparently this makes me an anomaly.

How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? 6 books, 2 graphic novels, 3 comic books, and 2 magazines, in addition to various audiobooks

Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? My goals are to stay up for as long as possible and read as much as possible. I'd like to read at least 3 of my books, both of the graphic novels, and all three of the comics. We'll see. I'd also like to visit new blogs and make some new friends.

If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time? I was a cheerleader last year, so I wouldn't exactly call myself a veteran. As a Literature teacher, however, my best advice would be to have fun. Which reading always is, right? :)

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour One Wrap-Up

Title of book(s) read since last update: Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
Number of books read since you started: part of 1
Pages read since last update: 80
Running total of pages read since you started: 80
Amount of time spent reading since last update: 45 minutes-ish
Running total of time spent reading since you started: 45 minutes-ish
Mini-challenges completed: n/a, but I did enter a drawing
Other participants you’ve visited: Chris, Andi, Mrs. S, Care
Prize you’ve won: none (yet!)

24-Hour Read-a-Thon: Hour One

To kick off the 'Thon, here's a fun little quiz (discovered via Aerin):

Galadriel

Possessing a rare combination of wisdom and humility, while serenely dominating your environment you selflessly use your powers to care for others.

Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.

Galadriel is a character in the Middle-Earth universe. You can read more about her at the Galadriel Worshippers Army.

Yeah, me and 250,287 other people. Oh, well. Now I'm off to read...I think I'll start with Pretties, so I can finish up the Uglies trilogy.

Read-a-Thon!

<--- Get used to this picture; you'll be seeing it a lot this weekend. :)






The 24-Hour Read-a-thon is starting tomorrow at 12pm GMT - 7am for me. I'm excited, because this will be my first time participating as a reader. Last time I was a cheerleader and hosted my very own mini-challenge.

In addition to my current TBR pile, here are the books that I picked up to read for the 'thon:
In her Read-a-thon preview post, Nymeth included the opening lines from her RAT books (she credits Debi for giving her the idea). I liked it so much, I'm doing it, too:

The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
"We didn't always live on Mango Street."

Gentlemen of the Road, Michael Chabon
"For numberless years a myna had astounded travelers to the caravansary with its ability to spew indecencies in ten languages, and before the fight broke out everyone assumed the old blue-tongued devil on its perch by the fireplace was the one who maligned the giant African with such foulness and verve."

Bella at Midnight, Diane Stanley
"When the message came and I saw it was from Edward, I nearly choked on my plum cake."

Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn (This just came in from BookMooch today - it's been on my wishlist for ages, so I'm thrilled it got here in time for the 'thon!)
"Dear Cousin Tassie,
Thank you for the lovely postcards. I trust that you and Aunt Mittie had a pleasant trip, and that all your stateside friends and paternal relations are healthy and happy."

Pretties, Scott Westerfeld (I finished Uglies today, so I'm looking forward to completing the trilogy this weekend.)
"Getting dressed was always the hardest part of the afternoon."

Specials, Scott Westerfeld (ibid.)
"The six hoverboards slipped among the trees with the lightning grace of playing cards thrown flat and spinning."

The Marvel Comics Illustrated Version of Blade Runner (I have no idea where this came from, but I'm eager to see how it compares to the original book.)
"The city is vast. Its levels deep. Its towers are tall; monuments of stone and glass thrusting out of perpetual smog and mist rivaled only by exploding plumes of industrial fire."

Marvel Comics Dune The Official Comic Book (I've had this since my undergrad days, but only recently discovered it again when I moved.)
"A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it is the year ten thousand one ninety-one."

The individual comics are the Serenity: Better Days series, which I bought at Dragon*Con a few months ago and haven't read yet. Why? I don't know. But Wash better be in the story, or I will be a very angry fangirl.

I also have some novels and short stories from The Classic Tales Podcast and LibriVox saved on my iTunes and iPod, just in case. You never know when I'll get the urge to walk around in the woods while listening to Jane Austen's Love and Freindship [sic]. I also have some e-books saved on my computer, including a glorified Firefly fanfic. At some point, I will probably watch Neil Gaiman read The Graveyard Book, and for other Gaiman fans out there, here's a link to a free audio download of "A Study in Emerald," from Fragile Things.

Ooh, and I almost forgot: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart
I don't have the opening line for this one, as I checked it out of the school's library today, left it in my car, and am too lazy at present to go get it. Plus, it's raining. But I'm sure it'll make its way inside somehow. :)

Happy reading!

Weekly Geeks #21

This week’s Weekly Geek’s theme is sort of a combination group project / scavenger hunt.

Below, you’ll find a list of 100 first lines from books. Our basic project is to identify these.

You can participate to a greater or lesser extent, depending on how many of the optional steps you feel like taking part in.

I've pasted them here, along with the ones I knew right off the bat. If you know any that I missed, let me know in the comments.

Here are the first lines. The ones I know are bold and have the title/author listed after (feel free to borrow answers for your own posts!), the ones I don't know are in green, and the ones I had help with are in purple with credit given for where I got it from:

1. Call me Ishmael.
Moby Dick, Herman Melville

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

3. A screaming comes across the sky.
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon (Thanks, Joanne!)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Thanks, softdrink!)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1984, George Orwell

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

10. I am an invisible man.
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard.

12. You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
The Trial, Franz Kafka (Thanks, Tammy!)

14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino (Thanks, softdrink! I feel really dumb for not getting this one on my own.)

15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.

18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.

20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Paul Clifford, Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Thanks, softdrink!)

23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
The City of Glass, Paul Auster (Thanks, Joanne!)

25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (Thanks, Tammy!)

26. 124 was spiteful.
Beloved, Toni Morrison (Thanks, Tammy!)

27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes

28. Mother died today.
The Stranger, Albert Camus (Thanks, Joanne!)

29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.
Waiting, Ha Jin

30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Neuromancer, William Gibson

31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man.

32. Where now? Who now? When now?

33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. “Stop!” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.”

34. In a sense, I am Jacob Horner.

35. It was like so, but wasn’t.

36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled.

37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

38. All this happened, more or less.
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

39. They shoot the white girl first.

40. For a long time, I went to bed early.

41. The moment one learns English, complications set in.

42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane;

44. Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston (Thanks, Tammy!)

45. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s admonition, against Allen’s angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa’s antipodal ant annexation.

47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemmingway

49. It was the day my grandmother exploded.

50. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides (Thanks, softdrink!)

51. Elmer Gantry was drunk.
Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis (Thanks, softdrink!)

52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.

53. It was a pleasure to burn.
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

54. A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene (Thanks, Joanne!)

55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes’ chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression.

56. I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho’ not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call’d me.
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

57. In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.

58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

59. It was love at first sight.

60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?

61. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.
The Razor's Edge, William Somerset Maugham (Thanks, Tammy!)

62. Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

64. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

65. You better not never tell nobody but God.
The Color Purple, Alice Walker (Thanks, Joanne and Tammy!)

66. “To be born again,” sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, “first you have to die.”
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie (Thanks, Joanne!)

67. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.

68. Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.

69. If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.
Herzog, Saul Bellow

70. Francis Marion Tarwater’s uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.

71. Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there’s a peephole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.

72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson.

73. Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World.

74. She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him.

75. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

76. “Take my camel, dear,” said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.

78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

79. On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.

80. Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash.
Crash, J.G. Ballard (Thanks, Joanne!)

82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (Thanks, softdrink!)

83. “When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,” Papa would say, “she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.”
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn (Thanks, softdrink!)

84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.

85. When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
The Last Good Kiss, James Crumley (Thanks, Joanne!)

86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man.

87. I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled.
I, Claudius, Robert Graves (Thanks, softdrink!)

88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I’ve come to learn, is women.

89. I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.

90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods.

91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl’s underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self.

92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

93. Psychics can see the color of time it’s blue.

94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together.

95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen.

96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.
Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood (Thanks, Joanne!)

97. He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.
Orlando, Virginia Woolf (Thanks, dreamybee!)

98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour.

99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane (Thanks, Caite via Ali!)