The Next Best Book Club discussion

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier

"Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had had a happy life."

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Sorry, I forgot to put my next line. It's been a long day :)

"The postwoman Eva Kluge slowly climbs the steps of 55 Jablonski Strasse."

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada

"Captain First Rank Marko Ramius of the Soviet Navy was dressed for the Artic conditions normal to the Northern Fleet submarine base at Polyarnyy."

That took me by surprise. The Hans Fallada book is called Alone in Berlin here in the UK.

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

"Lightning has struck me all my life."

Remarkable Creatures By Tracy Chevalier

Next:

"In the upper right-hand corner of the photo is a miniature airplane that looks as if it is flying right into my forehead."

This one's got me stumped!

I think maybe it's Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult.

If that's right, here's the next one: "Vienna was the city of statues."

Collages by Anaïs Nin

"The flotillas of the dead sailed around the world on underwater rivers."

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett


"I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother's house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen."

The Gathering by Anne Enright

Next line is...

"Once upon a time, fairy tales were awesome."

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

"Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood."

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

"So, now get up."

I think we're stuck - maybe give us a different one?

It was Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Let's try a new one.

"Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlour, in the town of P__, in Kentucky."

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

"My father had a face that could stop a clock"

OK, here's a clue - it's a book by Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
... I was so busy reading his latest one I didn't check this group!

"I sat at my desk, my monitor and microphone in front of me, maps and notebook paper spread over the whole surface."

Kitty Goes to War by Carrie Vaughn

"It was as black in the closet as Old Blood."

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

"Unpaved, uneven trails pretended to be roads; they tied the nation’s coasts together like laces holding a boot, binding it with crossed strings and crossed fingers."

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

"The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."

It by Stephen King

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul."

Dune by Frank Herbert

"You better not never tell nobody but God."

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

"The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as "The Styles Case" has now somewhat subsided."

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

"The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry."

Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy

"Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs
changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed."

Persuasion by Jane Austen

"There are some fields near Manchester, well known to th inhabitants as 'Green Heys Field,' through which runs a public footpath to a little village about two miles distant."

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

"There would be death at its beginnings as there would be death again at its end."

Clue: this was a popular book, made into a movie starring Robert Redford.

The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

"Tucking my hair back, I squinted at the parchment, trying to form the strange angular letters as smoothly as I could."

Black Magic Sanction by Kim Harrison

"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?' "

Alice in Wonderland

"One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away."

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

"Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-17th September--a Thursday."

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie


"I do not propose to add anything to what has already been written concerning the loss of the "Lady Vain.""

The Island of Dr. Moreau; Wells.

Next:


"All this happened, more or less"

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut


"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"When the fair gold morning of April stirred Mary Hawley awake, she turned over to her husband and saw him, little fingers pulling a frog mouth at her."

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

"3 May. Bistritz.--Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late."

Dracula.

"The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom."

Dorothy Sayers - Have His Carcase

"Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before."

Michel Faber - The Crimson Petal and the White

"The two women were alone in the London flat. "The point is," said Anna as her friend came back from the telephone on the landing, "the point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracked up."

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

"Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith."

Stranger in a Strange Land (a favorite)


"The last camel died at noon."

Wow, not the book I thought it was ... this is a tough one. Can you check to be sure you've quoted it correctly?

The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett.

Next:

"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975."

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Next: "Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter."

I read the "KEY TO REBECA" BY KEN FOLLETT,i love this book

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

Next:

"The beginning is simple to mark."