The Next Best Book Club discussion

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

"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 by Ernest Hemingway

"I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother's apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage."

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

"All this happened, more or less."

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward on the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

"I see..." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.

Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice

"The rue du Coq d'Or, Paris, seven in the morning."

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

"The end of the world started when Pegasus landed on the hood of my car."

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

"Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday."

Still Life by Louise Penny

"Breathe. My eyes swelled as i swallowed against the lump in my throat."

Reason to Breathe by Rebecca Donovan

Call me Ishmael.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville

"I have never looked into my sister's eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to a beguiling moon."

Girls by Lori Lansens

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 by Jane Austen

"Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes."

Animal Farm by George Orwell

"I grew up as the son of a man who could not possibly have been my father."

Animal Farm by George Orwell

A screaming comes across the sky.

516: The Bells by Richard Harvell

517 : Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

" Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. "

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

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 by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

"I am a century old, an impossible age, and my brain has no anchor in the present."

What I Was by Meg Rosoff

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

"On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide -- it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese -- the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope."

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

"It began in the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel".

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

"Dear Gabe,
The drugs help me bend my fingers around a pen."

Letting Go by Philip Roth

"there will be no awakening".

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning"

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

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.

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

"We were in the ugliest apartment in all of Manhattan, and it wasn't just that my brain was especially programmed away from art appreciation: objectively these paintings were all hideous."

Beautiful Player by Christina Lauren

"Wax crept along the ragged fence in a crouch, his boots scraping the dry ground."

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson

" I knew my brother would turn into a panther before he did. "

"It's an important an popular fact that things are not always what they seem."

Opening line in the script to the Hitchhiker movie as transcribed in the "making of the movie" bonus section to the 2005 Del Ray edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy :D

Hi MK! In this game one person identifies the book quoted in the previous post, and then supplies a new quote. I think you gave the answer to your quote. Going from 531:

Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

next quote:
"I know I'm not an ordinary ten-year-old kid."

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones.

Scarlett was not a pretty girl.

Alycia wrote: "Hi MK! In this game one person identifies the book quoted in the previous post, and then supplies a new quote. I think you gave the answer to your quote. Going from 531:

[book:Dead as a Doornail..."


woops! sorry, I thought it was a similar post in another group :p

OK, I cannot for the life of me find the book in message 535. Hint? Please?

I suppose the book in message 535 is Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, but it is quoted incorrectly (quoted from memory perhaps?)

let's get this group going again.

new quote:

"Louise Akerblom, an estate agent, left the Savings Bank in Skurup shortly after 3:00 in the afternoon on Friday, April 24."

Jeff wrote: "Scarlett was not a pretty girl."

I agree with you Someoneyouknow, this wasn't the opening line from GWTW.

The White Lioness by Henning Mankell

"The girl was the first to hear the loud pounding on the door."

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

"My first impression was that the stranger's eyes were of an unusually light blue. They met mine for several blank seconds, vacant, unmistakably scared."

The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr Norris/Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

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

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

"I stare down at my shoes, watching as a fine layer of ash settles on the worn leather."

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

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 by Charles Dickens

"I met Pablo Picasso in May 1943, during the German Occupation of France."

Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot

"They had endured years of waking up alone, making their kids breakfast, taking them to school and picking them up, fixing dinner and kissing them good night, promising them that Daddy was thinking of them all of the time.

The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel

I am an invisible man.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

"Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who so cruelly hurt his daughter, who tried to dishonor her."

The Godfather by Mario Puzo


"Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space."

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife."

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

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.