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Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 4:01 am
by Alynna Lis Eachann
Okay, I swallowed my pride and looked it up: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 8:25 pm
by MsMary
*ding ding ding ding ding*

8)

You win the prize. :P

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 11:01 pm
by danlo
I knew it was Marquez, I just didn't know which book. Man I haven't visited this thread in ages...

Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2005 8:33 pm
by MsMary
I think this thread became sort of neglected when it was moved here...

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:33 am
by Sorus
"Most of the crowd at Mallorys Bar & Sleep over in Delta Sector had no idea what was really going on. As far as they were concerned, it was just another example of animal passion, men and women driven together by lust - the kind of thing everybody understood, or at least dreamed about. The only uncommon feature was that in this case the passion included some common sense. Only a few people knew there was more to it."
Not his best work, but I've always liked the opening lines.

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 9:40 am
by Alynna Lis Eachann
Why, The Real Story, of course. :)

How about this one:
'DESCRIBE, USING DIAGRAMS WHERE APPROPRIATE, THE EXACT CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO YOUR DEATH.'

Saunders had been dead for almost two weeks now, and, so far, he hadn't enjoyed a minute of it. What he wasn't enjoying at this particular moment was having to wade through the morass of forms and legal papers he'd been sent to complete by the Department of Death and Deceaseds' Rights.

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:18 pm
by Avatar
Sounds like Red Dwarf (or one of the sequels).

--A

Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2005 12:59 am
by Sorus
Didn't intend for that to be trivia, though I should have tagged it. :D

That looks familiar as well. I wouldn't have come up with Red Dwarf, but it seems like a safe guess.

Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 1:36 am
by Alynna Lis Eachann
It is indeed the original Red Dwarf.
Didn't intend for that to be trivia, though I should have tagged it.
And here I was, all proud of getting one right. ;) ;)

Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 2:39 am
by Cail
"Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no bugs in his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after hour suffering the pain of the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his hair;in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs."

So begins Philip K. Dick's masterpiece A Scanner Darkly.

Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 8:13 am
by lucimay
my favorite opening paragraph of all time....

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bircks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 5:15 pm
by Sorus
Alynna Lis Eachann wrote:It is indeed the original Red Dwarf.
Didn't intend for that to be trivia, though I should have tagged it.
And here I was, all proud of getting one right. ;) ;)
My bad. Here are two to make up for it. :wink:

The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October sky, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed sub-category. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night.

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 7:53 pm
by danlo
Crap that drove me crazy! Cause I always get Needful Things mixed up with Something Wicked This Way Comes--but Needful Things takes place near the Atlantic-so it, obviously, couldn't be that. Second one--no idea...

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 8:05 pm
by Sorus
Something Wicked This Way Comes is correct! :D

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 8:14 pm
by Edge
The second one is from Neal Stephenson's superb cyberpunk classic, 'Snow Crash'.

I love that book! :)

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 8:25 pm
by danlo
Damm--I should have known that! :-x Go Edge...

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 8:37 pm
by Edge
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-wracked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 9:00 pm
by Alynna Lis Eachann
Would never have gotten those.

Ha! Found the one I've been looking for. A great book, but not one I've had a chance to finish. It is quite emotionally draining and follows a storytelling pattern that I don't generally like:
Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. She was already in the habit of writing down important matters, and afterward, when she was mute, she also recorded trivialities, never suspecting that fifty years later I would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own.

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 11:17 pm
by danlo
Edge's is A Wizard of Earthsea (I'm still pondering ALE's... sounds familiar-as long as it isn't Bronte)

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:41 pm
by danlo
This thread's been dead for awhile. How about:

Hapscomb's Texaco sat on US 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston. Tonight the regulars were there, sitting by the cash register, drinking beer, talking idly, watching the bugs fly into the big lighted sign.