Friday, March 11, 2011

A Fun Little Book Game!

Bargain Books
 [Warning: Random post-pub post.]

So today was World Book Day! Or rather yesterday was, I’m just home from my Thursday pub quiz and only now realised it’s actually tomorrow (I’m in the future, yippee!). Anyway, a friend of mine posted this to Facebook earlier and the responses were such fun I thought I’d try it out here. It’s a game! 

 To play all you have to do is grab the closest book you have to hand, open to page 56 and post the 5th sentence either to your own blog or in the comments below. Don’t say what book it is or anything and let me and whoever else wants to play guess.  Seriously, this is good craic! 
  
Oh, and by the way, you’ll notice the distinct lack of cynicism on my part between this post on World Book Day Vs. my previous one on National Tree Week. Maybe those couple of beers tonight had an affect on me after all :) Ahhh - women, trees and now books. It’s been a good week! 

p.s. Whoops! As just pointed out by the lovely Sydnii, I forgot to include my own.  (That'd be the beer again.) Here we go: "True to his word, Miller eschewed a drink, but he appeared happy enough surrounded by the high spirited pub-goers."  

p.p.s I've no idea what's going on with the mad spacing and font sizing on my posts recently, it's not intentional. Apologies.

19 comments:

Sydnii said...

But you didn't do it!

"But this music was entirely different, as well as entirely new: all but two pieces had been written just that year, and three of them, less than two weeks ago."

Róisín said...

You're right! On it now :)

Anyway, your quote's really annoying me! It could just be my imagination and I might not know at all but it's seems so familair. Argh!

Robin Larkspur said...

"Then she started to talk in a bewildering swirl of words."

Della said...

"You will find me a cheerful little body," answered Phoebe, smiling, and yet with a kind of gentle dignity; "and I mean to earn my bread.["]

Anthropomorphica said...

He took me back to Cherkasov's estate, where he lived, and I disguised myself as a seaman, and worked my way, via Sweden and Holland, to my refuge here.

Kathy said...

OOOOooohhhh...very cool game.

"Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos."

I think I'll carry this over to my blog, too. If you don't mind. ;o)

Kathy

Sydnii said...

@Róisín -- Unless you're a marimbist/big fan of marimba music, I doubt very much that you know the quote ;)

Anonymous said...

"In person he was cadaverous and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance."

Róisín said...

Ah! Seriously, your’s are all so much harder than the ones from my friends on Facebook- was able to guess about half of their’s! Anyway, I’ll give it my best shot (which will be crap, I warn):

Sydnii - If that’s the case then I doubt very much I know the quote too! It did sound so familiar though, but I suppose any sentence could really.

Robin - I don’t know why but for some reason this puts me in mind of Alice! Or maybe it’s about Lyra in His Dark Materials? I was going to go check but that’d be cheating ;)

Della - Is it from one of the Brontes or maybe Jane Austen??? Again, very familiar…

Melanie - I’ve a sneaking suspicion this is from a literary giant of some sort - possibly Hemingway or Dostoevsky? I know it’s not but from reason I keep thinking of ‘The Idiot’.

Kathy - Again, I know I’m probably way off the mark with this one, but I can’t help but keep thinking of ‘The Rum Diary’. Obviously it’s probably just the mention of mojitos. It’s been years since I read it, though I can’t remember Mr Thompson referring to God too often ;)

Cymru - This HAS to be a fantasy book! There’s a few that I’m guessing, though yet again I’m probably totally wrong. I was thinking of ‘The Black Magician’ trilogy but now when I think of it he had straight hair… Then I was thinking maybe it’s from ‘The Fires of Heaven’ triology, though now I’m leaning more towards a baddy from a sci-fi novel by Iain M Banks I read ages ago, can’t remember it’s name. Argh, I’m probably completely wrong again! Really liked the description though.

As I said, I knew I wouldn’t be very good at these ones! Did anyone guess anybody else’s? Or mine?

Anonymous said...

Roisin,

You indeed have the right genre.

As for everybody else's quotes, I'm quite stupefied. This is a hard game, but fun! I'm going to have to play this with my family one day.

Heathen said...

Okay, here's mine...

Ferro gave a small half-shrug. "Who else? Macchio's dead. Ruger's sure as hell dead. Unless there was a fourth man in that car, the only suspect we have left is Boyd."

Della said...

Well, it is 19th century, but it's from Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables. I'm baffled by your quote and the others, really, though I imagined myself a reader :)

Anthropomorphica said...

A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book ;)
Loved Cymru's sentence!!
By the way, I have no idea about any of them, oops!

Anonymous said...

Should I give a clue? Why not?

This "cadaverous" man was once called a codfish by one of the other characters, if I remember correctly.

Frances Tyrrell said...

First book to hand was Adobe Photoshop 6.0, page 56 is a half-tone single eye. Wrong book shelf!
The secondy try is better: "The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off."

vintagefindings@me.com said...

"I wondered for the first time where I myself would go next, and, if I went there, if that path might branch as elm tress do and as rivers do and go elsewhere."

Róisín said...

I’ve been reading through this again and I’m honestly tearing my hair out! I’m with you Della, I thought I was well read too but this has me reviewing that opinion! And I did so well we when played this on Facebook too :(

Heathen - I don’t know it but it sounds like a crime novel, and almost like a film.

Cymru - It’s from something really famous isn’t it? I would say Harry Potter but I’ve never read HP and this is definitely familiar! And ‘codfish’ makes me think it’s something older than that anyway…. Oh, oh!! Is it Captain Hook???

Melanie and Della - those are two books that I always half intended on reading. I really like both the lines you posted here so I’m definitely going to now.

Frances - This one is another which I’m sure I know. I’ve been wrong about that before though! I’m still thinking this is one of the classics, and it’s tinkling at my mind…

Karen - I honestly don’t think I know this one. I couldn’t even hazard a guess!

Oh, and if you were wondering, mine was from ‘The Devil in Green’ by Mark Chadbourne. Only getting into his stuff now and now that I have I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to discover him. Great stuff altogether. Anyway folks, thanks for playing along. It’s been tougher than I expected but fun all the same!

Anonymous said...

Right, Roisin! None other than Captain "Blackavised Codfish" Hook. No child should ever go without reading Peter Pan and believing in faeries.

I'm rubbish at this game--I didn't know anyone's quotes. Maybe we should play another version of this game that involves identifying first sentences of books. I might do a little better with that one.

KY Warrior Librarian said...

"A wandering cat has come to an ordinary suburban neighborhood to share a secret and to speak about her dream for the future with her fellow felines."

Now how did I miss World Book Day? I wish I could say it was because I was tossing back a couple of beers at the local pub...but, nay tis not the case. Women, trees and books...a good week indeed my friend.

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