I like the guess the movie and guess the song threads, so why not a guess the book thread. Same rules as the other two threads, first person gives a quote, another person gives the title and author of the book it is from and leaves another quote. I'll start with a real easy one that is one of my favorite opening lines to any book.


"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler."

I dunno. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino?

"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them..."

I surprised I still remember it word-for-word.

I hope I don't screw the pooch by being too specific. The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings) by JRR Tolkien.

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"A screaming comes across the sky"

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

"umber whunnnn
yerrrnnn umber whunnnn
fayunnnn
These sounds: even in the haze."

do they have to be a complete sentece or can they just be part of a sentence. I mean, what if the beginning and end give too much away and have the names and things?

Misery by Stephen King

try this:

"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church; and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile and cunning"

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce

"You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!"

That quote is from Catch 22. I have read so many books that trying to choose a quote that is not entirely obscure will make my brain hurt. Plus I'm at work with no books to dig through. I authorize someone else to take my turn.

I hereby take PRG's turn with:

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly,
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land,
Man got to tell himself he understand.

This one I knew off the top of my head very quickly! Cat's Cradle. Someone else take my turn again please.

Hey, I knew that one! Oh well, I'll settle for still being able to supply the next quote:

"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."

You all are making it too easy! Maybe I will try and track down something tricky. Although with Google, it makes it kind of pointless. This is another one I knew right away though, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Carry on.

"'I can't help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I can't help it.... I'm tired.'"

One flew over the cuckoo's nest/


My current school reading book....

"Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world."

Frankenstein

heres a quote:
(actually its a poem from the book)
"o little one
my little one
come with me
your life is done
forget the future
forget the past
life is over
breathe your last"

Let's try to get this started again . . .

Below are the opening lines of a novel:

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends."

That one's pretty easy. It's the opening of Fight Club.

Here is one that I think may be a bit more difficult. It is from the opening of the novel I am about to re-read.

"It was my intention, when I began, to write and introduction to my work on the Germans. Though it's thick folders lie beside me now, I know I cannot. Endings, instead, possess me...all ways out."

I'm pretty sure that is the tunnel by William Gass.

How about this opening line, for all the nerds out there:

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.