/lit/ - Literature

STARRING SANTA

One hundred famous opening sentences rewritten with a festive slant. A handful of translated works. No author repeated. Valuable cryptocurrency prizes to be won!*

* To be eligible for a prize, participants must be cute, female and two-dimensional.

The authors:

Douglas Adams, Louisa May Alcott, Dante Alighieri, Matthew Arnold, Jane Austen, J. M. Barrie, Peter Benchley, William Blake, Ray Bradbury, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Rupert Brooke, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Anthony Burgess, Lewis Carroll, Miguel de Cervantes, Raymond Chandler, S. T. Coleridge, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Eliot, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Ford Maddox Ford, William Gaddis, William Gibson, William Golding, Kenneth Grahame, Robert Graves, Thomas Gray, Graham Greene, Dashiell Hammett, Thomas Hardy, L. P. Hartley, Joseph Heller, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Herbert, Russell Hoban, Ted Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry James, Jerome K. Jerome, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Daniel Keyes, Stephen King, Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence, Harper Lee, C. S. Lewis, H. P. Lovecraft, David Markson, Gabriel García Márquez, Daphne du Maurier, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Norman McLean, Herman Melville, A. A. Milne, Margaret Mitchell, Vladimir Nabokov, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, George Orwell, Mervyn Peake, Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie, J. D. Salinger, Jack Schaefer, Erich Segal, Robert Service, William Shakespeare, P. B. Shelley, Dodie Smith, Wallace Stevens, Bram Stoker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Makepeace Thackeray, Dylan Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson, J. R. R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, John Kennedy Toole, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, H. G. Wells, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, John Williams, Virginia Woolf, William Wordsworth

Hints on request.

1)
To begin at the beginning:

It is winter, Christmas Eve in the small town, frosty and icing-white, the thoroughfares hushed and the great, silent, reindeer-and-giftgiver sleigh swooping invisible down to the snow-white, low, white, so-white, eagerlyanticipating roofs.


2)
All reindeer, except one, have sensible noses.


3)
Santa — for there could be no doubt of his identity, though the covering of soot did something to disguise it — was in the act of stuffing a large present into the mouth of a stocking which hung from the mantelpiece.


4)
In my younger and less cynical years Father Christmas gave me some presents that I've been grateful for ever since.


5)
He was a fat man who drove around in a sleigh at Christmas and he had gone three hundred and sixty-four days now without delivering a gift.


6)
I was the neighing of the reindeer slain
By the jet intake of the aeroplane


7)
"To do this job," sang Father Christmas tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to get through the chimney."


8)
Under almost any circumstances there are few moments in life more exciting than the moment dedicated to the ceremony known as emptying the stockings.


9)
I write this struggling in the chimney-pot.


10)
He was a pound, perhaps two, over sixteen stone, strongly built, and he advanced straight at you with a cheery open gesture of the arms, head back, and a laughing demeanour which made you think of a friendly hippopotamus.

11)
When Mr Father Christmas of Greenland announced that he would shortly be celebrating the twenty-fourth of December with a round trip of immense magnitude, there was much chatter and excitement amongst the reindeer.


12)
I am a fat man . . . I am a jolly man.


13)
If you really start to think about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where all the presents come from, and what the lousy reindeer eat, and how we occupy ourselves the rest of the year, and all that rational kind of crap, but I feel it sort of spoils the magic, if you want to know the truth.


14)
A jingling comes across the sky.


15)
"Christmas will be awesome with loads of presents," gloated Anon, lying in his bed.


16)
Midway along my journey through the skies,
I found myself stuck tightly in a flue,
Because I'd eaten one too many pies.


17)
Father Christmas was not logical, but children seldom worried about it when blessed by his generosity as Anon was.


18)
It was about eleven o'clock in the evening, late December, with the stars all shining and a look of hard crisp snow in the clearness of the winter sky.


19)
Santa had that kind of cheeriness which seems to be thrown into relief by an absurd outfit.


20)
Having placed in the stocking sufficient gifts for a year's happiness, I withdrew myself into the dining room and addressed myself to the sherry and mince-pies, my face assuming a cheery and satisfied expression.

21)
One Christmas Eve and a very good Christmas it was there came Santa down the chimney and this Santa that was coming down the chimney had a present for a fine young fellow named Mister Anon.


22)
In the beginning, sometimes I left thank-you notes in the stockings.


23)
Perfect presents are all alike; every disappointing present is disappointing in its own way.


24)
Through the door, above the dying fire's embers, I could see them dangling.


25)
The magic deer flew across the skyline, and the giftgiver followed.


26)
The church-bells ring the hours of Christmas Eve,
The stockings hang beside the tinselled tree,
The children sleeping dream what they'll receive,
And leave the world to reindeer and to me.


27)
Here is Santa Claus, coming down the chimney now, bump bump bump, landing on the back of his head, atop his sack of presents.


28)
In our household, there was no clear line between logic and Father Christmas.


29)
It was a bright cold night in December, and the clocks were striking twelve.


30)
Dear child now in the frosty starlit hours of the town when the streets lie white and twinkling in the wake of the plough and now when the sober and sombreminded are tucked up sound in duvets and pillows and stockings hang long and wrinkled and waiting in the ingle, now in these midnight brick or tiled fireplaces where flames flash and sherryglasses stand gleamwise no soul shall come save him.

31)
I, Saint Nicholas, AKA Santa Claus, AKA Father Christmas, AKA various other things (for I shall not bore you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Nicholas the sucker" or "that cretin Nicholas" or "Nicholas the easy touch", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting with earliest childhood and continuing until I reach that remarkable moment where, some two thousand years ago, at an age you need not concern yourself with, I found myself elevated to the astonishing post I have inhabited ever since.


32)
There were ten of us — Dasher, and Dancer, and Prancer, and Vixen, and Comet, and Cupid, and Donner, and Blitzen, and myself, and Rudolph.


33)
Last night I dreamt he came down the chimney again.


34)
If I should stick, think only this of me:
That there's some blockage in a narrow flue
That is forever Christmas.


35)
The Child had been wishing very hard all the evening, looking at his little stocking.


36)
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As comfortable as a chimney'.


37)
Because I could not stay awake —
I missed the chance to see —
The fat man landing on the roof —
His joviality.


38)
Anon was beginning to get very tired of lying in bed upstairs trying to sleep, and having no success; once or twice he had peeped out of the curtains at the night sky, but it had no sleighs or reindeer in it, "and what is the use of a sky," thought Anon, "without sleighs or reindeer?"


39)
Father Christmas entered the chimney of the house as a giftgiver in the hours of darkness, at the age of who knows what.


40)
Many years later, as he faced the horrors of adulthood, Anon was to remember that distant evening when his father helped him to hang his stocking.

41)
When Father Christmas smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they vanished into the tufts of his beard, his ears glowed with rubicund warmth, and a spirit of festive cheer radiated all around his person to a distance of approximately ten yards.


42)
The child went reluctantly to bed, and his retiring form left behind a stocking stretched out on the mantelpiece, waiting.


43)
Among twenty snowy rooftops,
The only moving thing
Was the tail of the reindeer.


44)
Sleighs at a distance have every child's wish on board.


45)
Santa is the cheeriest chap, taking
Presents out of his fat sack, stuffing
Gifts into hung socks, bringing
Great glee to girls and boys.


46)
For many years, on Christmas Eve, I used to go to bed early.


47)
Santa knew, before he had been in the chimney three seconds, that they meant to trap him.


48)
It is a truth acknowledged even by heathens, that a lone fat man in a red coat, in possession of a large sack, must be in want of a glass of sherry and a mince pie.


49)
In the hours before Christmas Day, when all the final bustling about had reached a nearly orgasmic frenzy, a cheery old man came to visit the stocking of the boy, Anon.


50)
The living-room was filled with the rich odour of sherry and mince-pies, and following a light tinkling of bells from the rooftop, there came from the fireplace the heavy thud of the presents, followed by the more delicate thud of the red-robed gentleman.

51)
It was a soft and moonlit night; the snow fell in flakes, except every now and then, when it was checked by the occasional gust of wind in some country or other (for it is all around the world that our tale unfolds), whistling along the rooftops and rattling the chimney-pots which stood open and inviting against the darkness.


52)
Once I am sure there's no-one still awake
I wriggle down, letting the sack drop, thud.


53)
Somewhere in the Arctic, in a place whose precise location I do not care to divulge, a gentleman has lived for a long time, one who has a sack and a sleigh nearby and keeps nine reindeer for travelling.


54)
Boys are playing guess-what-we'll-get around a fireplace with a number of stockings fastened to it.


55)
I travelled swiftly through the snow
That floats from high in silent spots,
When all at once I saw, below,
A host of waiting chimney-pots.


56)
My muther says I shud rite down what I want for Cristmas and I mite get sum of the things I want in my stoking.


57)
Once upon a Christmas glistening, as I lay half-sleeping, listening,
Thinking whether Santa would appear, or sternly stay aloof —
While I pondered, eyelids dropping, all at once there came a clopping,
As of reindeer gently stopping, stopping on my bedroom roof.


58)
Santa Claus sat at a forward angle on the polished wood sleigh seat, looking one minute down at the chimney-pot as if he wanted to jump straight into it, and the next at the roof in general, perhaps to judge where a landing might be effected.


59)
The stockings hang tonight,
The sack is full, the snow lies crisp.


60)
The great sleigh moved silently through the night snowflakes, propelled by magic reindeer with tufty tails.

61)
While the present century was in its early twenties, and on one frosty night in December, there swooped down onto Anon's humble roof, somewhere on the planet Earth, a large magical sleigh, with nine reindeer in decorative harness, driven by a fat fellow in a red-and-white outfit, at an incomprehensible number of miles an hour.


62)
Santa! Santa! Coming soon,
Underneath a frosty moon,
What replacement could there be
To match thy splendid jollity?


63)
I get the willies when I see narrow chimneys.


64)
A red festive cap squeezed the top of the great cheery protruberance of a head.


65)
I imagine this midnight Christmas visit:
Someone else has arrived
Beside the clock's watchfulness
And that blank wall where my stocking hangs.


66)
This is the comfiest story I have ever heard.


67)
The man with a white beard lowered himself down the last few feet of chimney and began to make his way towards the stockings.


68)
No child would have believed, in the last days of December, that he had been watched all year, keenly and closely, by an intelligence greater than his own yet perhaps kindlier; that as he busied himself about his various activities he was being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as an invigilator might scrutinize a pupil trying to sneak a peek at crib notes on his wrist in an examination hall.


69)
Santa Claus's jaw was fat and friendly, his chin a generous 'U' under the more flexible 'U' of his mouth.


70)
Dec. 26. — I have just returned from a visit to every child in the world — the multitudinous neighbours that I shall not be troubled with for another year.

71)
24th December. — Greenland. — Left the North Pole at 7:00pm, arriving here an hour later; should have been quicker, but the reindeer are getting tubby.


72)
Call me Santa.


73)
Christmas Eve is a foreign country; the laws of time and space work differently there.


74)
When he was nearly six, my brother Anon got his stocking badly stretched at the top.


75)
On Christmas Eve did Santa Claus
A stunning present-run perform:
When Rudolph and the others ran
At speeds unknowable to man,
Thereby remaining warm.


76)
The most wonderful thing in the world, I think, is the ability of the human mind to embrace irrationality when faced with the prospect of a stockingful of presents.


77)
Anon's roof, that is, the main covering of unremarkable slanted slate, taken by itself would have evinced a certain unwelcoming quality were it not for the protrusion of that splendid wide-open chimney-pot that thrust invitingly like a landing-beacon into the snowy night.


78)
He flew onto our rooftop in the winter of '22.


79)
I met a fellow from a humble home
Who said "Two long and empty socks of wool
Hang by the fireplace."


80)
What can you say about a two-thousand-year-old man who flies?

81)
He was somewhere around Greenland on the edge of the Arctic Circle when the reindeer's amphetemines began to kick in.


82)
I celebrate the month, and bring the sleigh,
And what I possess you shall possess,
For every gift belonging to me as good as belongs to you.


83)
There was no possibility of getting a gift that year.


84)
Late in the evening of a chilly day in December, two stockings were hanging alone over their fireplace, in a well-furnished living-room, in the town of ———, in ———.


85)
There was a man who received a copy of The Handmaid's Tale for Christmas, and he almost deserved it.


86)
I had the description of the sleigh, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different description.


87)
And then went down to the sleigh,
Set course from Greenland, forth in the wintry sky, and
He sat up plump and hale on that swart sleigh,
Bore gifts aboard her, food for the reindeer also,
Heavy with eating, and deer in traces
Bore him out onward with whistling runners,
Santa's this craft, the red-robed fellow.


88)
It was the evening of the twenty-fourth of December and I was in bed with my teddy-bear when I had a feeling Santa was coming to visit me.


89)
A man came to my stocking once,
On a cold, cold night, and I in pajamas up in bed,
To fill it.
90)
The sleigh — upon which Santa had loaded the sack, the packages and parcels, and crammed them all in, some wrong-way-round, others on their side, all wrapped in cheery red festive paper — was ridden by him in a one-night tornado of activity, causing him to miss by inches several startled birds and a Boeing 757.

81)
He was somewhere around Greenland on the edge of the Arctic Circle when the reindeer's amphetemines began to kick in.


82)
I celebrate the month, and bring the sleigh,
And what I possess you shall possess,
For every gift belonging to me as good as belongs to you.


83)
There was no possibility of getting a gift that year.


84)
Late in the evening of a chilly day in December, two stockings were hanging alone over their fireplace, in a well-furnished living-room, in the town of ———, in ———.


85)
There was a man who received a copy of The Handmaid's Tale for Christmas, and he almost deserved it.


86)
I had the description of the sleigh, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different description.


87)
And then went down to the sleigh,
Set course from Greenland, forth in the wintry sky, and
He sat up plump and hale on that swart sleigh,
Bore gifts aboard her, food for the reindeer also,
Heavy with eating, and deer in traces
Bore him out onward with whistling runners,
Santa's this craft, the red-robed fellow.


88)
It was the evening of the twenty-fourth of December and I was in bed with my teddy-bear when I had a feeling Santa was coming to visit me.


89)
A man came to my stocking once,
On a cold, cold night, and I in pajamas up in bed,
To fill it.


90)
The sleigh — upon which Santa had loaded the sack, the packages and parcels, and crammed them all in, some wrong-way-round, others on their side, all wrapped in cheery red festive paper — was ridden by him in a one-night tornado of activity, causing him to miss by inches several startled birds and a Boeing 757.

91)
My original title being Nicholas, and my familiar designation Father Christmas, the popular tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more dignified than Santa.


92)
The sky above the chimney-pot was the colour of television showing a picture of a snowy night round about December 24th.


93)
Presents — in a voice that gloated.


94)
This is a tale of the hanging of two long, dangling, fairly clean woollen stockings for a gentleman who was flying fast.


95)
Now are the stockings on our mantelpiece
Made full and knobbly by the man in red;
And all the pristine snow that decked our roof
Disturbed by footprints not to be explained.


96)
On Crismas day when I war 11 I gone down stair and got my stocken he lykly ben the bes stocken i ever new any how there wernt no better before it nor i dont hope to see a better one agen.


97)
There are strange things planned and performed by the hands
Of the boys who lust for gifts;
The stories told are as cruel and cold
As the snow that's piled in drifts;
The pull of greed has produced foul deeds
While the innocent sleep in bed;
But the worst I remember was when, one December,
I bushwacked the man in red.


98)
Someone must have forgiven Anon, for one Christmas morning, despite having posted a lot of dubious content that year, he found his stocking full of splendid gifts.


99)
It was a pleasure to unwrap.


100)
Santa Claus, with four million mince pies inside him, sat in the sleigh on the final run back to the North Pole and thought about giving and receiving.

>>21423047
4 is The Great Gatsby
>>21423053
13 is The Catcher in the Rye
>>21423060
21 is A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man
>>21423070
48 is Pride and Prejudice
>>21423081
72 is Moby Dick
>>21423091
81 is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
>>21423095
98 is The Trial
merry christmas quizanon

Fuck off.

38 is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
40 is One Hundred Years of Solitude
45 is The Waste Land
57 is The Raven
62 is The Tyger
79 is Ozymandias
87 is The Cantos
91 is Great Expectations

>>21423727
Yes, 7/7. A fine start.

>4 is The Great Gatsby
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

>13 is The Catcher in the Rye
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

>21 is A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man
"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo."

>48 is Pride and Prejudice
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

>72 is Moby Dick
"Call Me Ishmael."

>81 is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

>98 is The Trial
"Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."

>>21423838
Yes, 8/8. At this rate we'll have them all done by bed-time.

>38 is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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 conversations?”

>40 is One Hundred Years of Solitude
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.

>45 is The Waste Land
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

>57 is The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

>62 is The Tyger
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

>79 is Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert."

>87 is The Cantos
And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.

>91 is Great Expectations
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.

>>21423053
>12

Notes from Underground

>>21424078
>12
>Notes from Underground
Correct. "I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man."

75 is Kubla Khan
37 is Because I could not stop for Death

29 is 1984
82 is Song of Myself

1 is Under Milk Wood
95 is Richard III

>>21424147

>75 is Kubla Khan
Correct. S. T. Coleridge.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.


>37 is Because I could not stop for Death
Correct. Our girl, Emily D.

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

>>21424160

>29 is 1984
Correct. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

>82 is Song of Myself
Correct. WW.

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you."


We're all out of animated girls now. Well, I have Asuka clapping but she's probably not being sincere. Let's have Miyako instead. She never does anything insincerely.

>>21424175

>1 is Under Milk Wood
Correct.

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.


>95 is Richard III
Correct.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

56 is Flowers for Algernon

>>21424270

>56 is Flowers for Algernon
Right. Charley Gordon telling it as only he can:

Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on.

34 is The Soldier (Rupert Brooke)

23 is Anna Karenina (sp?)

>>21424375
>34 is The Soldier (Rupert Brooke)
Correct.

If I should die, think only this of me
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.

>>21424391
>23 is Anna Karenina (sp?)
It is. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

73 is The Go-Between ("The past is a foreign country ..."

>>21424623
>73 is The Go-Between ("The past is a foreign country ..."
Correct. L. P. Hartley. "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."

85 is The voyage of the Dawn Treader "... and he almost deserved it.

71 is Dracula (Bram Stoker) "Left Munich at 8:35 PM ..."

>>21423729
It's considered rude to say that.

>>21424744
>85 is The voyage of the Dawn Treader "... and he almost deserved it.
Right. C. S. Lewis. "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

>>21424792
>71 is Dracula (Bram Stoker) "Left Munich at 8:35 PM ..."
Correct. "3 May. Bistritz. Left Munich at 8.35pm, on 1 May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46pm, but train was an hour late."

74 is To Kill A Mockingbird
64 is A Confederacy of Dunces
11 is The Lord Of The Rings

>>21423047
4 - F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
8 - Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady
>>21423053
12 - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from the Underground
13 - J. D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
14 - Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
19 - George Eliot - Middlemarch
>>21423060
21 - James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
22 - David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress
23 - Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
>>21423066
37 - Emily Dickinson - Because I could not stop for Death
>>21423070
45 - T. S. Eliot - The Waste Land
46 - Marcel Proust - Swann's Way
48 - Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
>>21423077
55 - William Wordsworth - Daffodils
56 - Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
57 - Edgar Allen Poe - The Raven
>>21423079
61 - William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair
62 - William Blake - The Tyger
63 - Joseph Heller - Something Happened
66 - Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier
>>21423081
72 - Herman Melville - Moby-Dick
79 - Percy Shelley - Ozymandias
>>21423091
83 - Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre
>>21423095
91 - Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
93 - William Gaddis - JR
95 - William Shakespeare - Richard III
98 - Franz Kafka - The Trial

Many thanks for doing this OP! I especially like the format that makes it difficult to cheat! Merry Christmas!

83 is Jane Eyre

52 - Philip Larkin - Church Going

>>21425210
Yes, all correct.

>74 is To Kill A Mockingbird
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."

>64 is A Confederacy of Dunces
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."

>11 is The Lord Of The Rings
"When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventyfirst birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."

>>21425278
A goodly haul here, for sure. Some have already been solved by others but a lot haven't.

4, 12, 13, 21, 37, 45, 48, 56, 57, 62, 72, 79, 91, 95, 98 - Already solved

>8 - Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

>14 - Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
A screaming comes across the sky.

>19 - George Eliot - Middlemarch
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

>22 - David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress
In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.

>46 - Marcel Proust - Swann's Way
For a long time I used to go to bed early.

>55 - William Wordsworth - Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er dales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils.

>61 - William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair
While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.

>63 - Joseph Heller - Something Happened
I get the willies when I see closed doors.

>66 - Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier
This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

>83 - Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

>93 - William Gaddis - JR
Money — in a voice that rustled.

>>21425279
Correct (although someone posted it just ahead of you).

>>21425322
>52 - Philip Larkin - Church Going
Correct.
"Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut."

70 is Wuthering Heights

15 is Little Women

5 is The old man and the sea

6. Pale Frost
25. The Toyslinger
51. Joll(y) Clifford
92. (S)nowromancer
99. Negative Fahrenheit 451

Thank you, Quizanon-sama, for blessing us with these threads.

>>21425557
>70 is Wuthering Heights
Right. "1801.– I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with."

>>21425563
>15 is Little Women
Correct. ' "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. '

>>21425669
>5 is The old man and the sea
Correct. "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."

>>21425756
Haha, yes, all correct, sort of.

Bump.

84 is Uncle Tom's Cabin

2 is Peter Pan

9 is I capture the castle

>>21428616
>84 is Uncle Tom's Cabin
Correct. "Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky."

Not so well-known these days I guess.

>>21428622
>2 is Peter Pan
Correct. "All children, except one, grow up."

>>21428650
>9 is I capture the castle
Correct. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

36 is The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul

>>21423053
16 is Divine Comedy

>>21423081
Hints for 71 and 72?

>>21428896
Nevermind, someone already got them

>>21428822
>36 is The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul
Right. "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As pretty as an airport'."

>>21428847
>16 is Divine Comedy
Right. Bit trickier with translations. "Midway along this journey of our life", etc

100 is Goldfinger

53 is Don Quixote

44 is Their Eyes Were Watching God

In the event that I don't get a chance to say this later: a loud shout out to OP! The incredible research and creativity that went in to the creation of this thread is mind-boggling. This thread exemplifies the best of what can happen on this site.

I have us at roughly 2/3 complete. I hope we can finish the fight.

>>21429132
>100 is Goldfinger
Correct. "James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death."

>>21429154
>53 is Don Quixote
Correct. "Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."

>>21429171
>44 is Their Eyes Were Watching God
Right. "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." A famous first line although not so many have read the book I guess.

7 is The Satanic Verses

80 is Love Story (E. Segal)

17 is Gone with the wind

35 is The Wind In The Willows

33 is Rebecca (D. du Maurier)

>>21423066
40 is a very liberal parody of One Hundred Years of Solitude

94 is Breakfast of Champions

28 is A River Runs Through It

86 is Ethan Frome

10 is Lord Jim

3 is Orlando (V. Woolf)

67 is Lord of the Flies

27) Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.”

32. Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
“THERE were four of us — George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency.”

76 is
The Call of Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

18) The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
“It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.”

69 The Maltese Falcon, Hammett

31 is I Claudius

54 is Rabbit Run

60. 'Jaws': Peter Benchley

24 is of course The Sound and the Fury

20 is at swim two birds

78) Shane, Jack Schaefer
“He rode into our valley in the summer of `89.”

97 is The Cremation of Sam McGee

58 is Wise Blood

50 is Oscar Wilde

Merry Christmas, quizanon

41 is Far from the Madding Crowd

43 is thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird.

cute and nice thread anon. I would buy you a book.

>>21429920
>7 is The Satanic Verses
Right. ' "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." '

>>21429942
>80 is Love Story (E. Segal)
Right. "What can you say about a 25 year old girl who died?"

>>21429952
>17 is Gone with the wind
Right. "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."

>>21429979
>35 is The Wind In The Willows
Right. "The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home."

>>21429987
>33 is Rebecca (D. du Maurier)
Right. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

Apologies for bundling all these together if it's not the same anon. I'm running out of cute anime girls :(

>>21429990
>40 is a very liberal parody of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Yes it is. "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."

>>21430024
>94 is Breakfast of Champions
Correct. "This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast."

>>21430046
>28 is A River Runs Through It
Correct. "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." Perhaps a more famous opening line than book, these days.

>>21430231
>86 is Ethan Frome
Right. "I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a differentstory." One of the hardest I guess.

>>21430293
>10 is Lord Jim
Correct. "He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull." A striking opening, although a less popular book than the one set in Vietnam.

>>21430302
>3 is Orlando (V. Woolf)
Correct. "He — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it — was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters."

>>21430336
>67 is Lord of the Flies
Correct. "The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon." Another tough one since it's quite a low-key opening.


More bundling. Will the supply of anime girls hold out? Only time will tell.

>>21430875
>27) Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne
>“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.”

>>21430883
>32. Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
>“THERE were four of us — George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency.”

>>21430906
>76 is
>The Call of Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft
>“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

>>21430914
>18) The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
>“It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.”

All correct. We're getting near the end I guess.

>>21430931
>69 The Maltese Falcon, Hammett
Correct. "Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting 'V' under the more flexible 'V' of his mouth."

>>21430941
>31 is I Claudius
Correct. "I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) was was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting with my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled."

>>21430946
>54 is Rabbit Run
Correct. "Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it."

>>21430956
>60. 'Jaws': Peter Benchley
Correct. "The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail."

>>21430966
>24 is of course The Sound and the Fury
It is. "Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."

>>21430978
>20 is at swim two birds
Correct. "Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes’ chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression." Another tough one I think since the book doesn't get talked about much.

>>21431003
>78) Shane, Jack Schaefer
>“He rode into our valley in the summer of `89.”
Correct. Another tricky one since it's not really a heavyweight work I suppose.

Commenting with the proper names
6. Pale Ice, Nabokov
25. The Gunslinger, King
26. Paul Clifford
27. Neuromancer
28. Fahrenheit 451

Ones left to match are
26, 30, 39, 42, 47, 49, 59, 65, 68, 77, 88, 89, 90, 96

Authors left are
Matthew Arnold, Anthony Burgess, Stephen Crane, Thomas Gray, Graham Greene, Frank Herbert, Russell Hoban, Ted Hughes, D. H. Lawrence, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Mervyn Peake, H. G. Wells, John Williams

>>21431523
>>21431055
I think you mean
51. Paul Clifford
92. Neuromancer
99. Fahrenheit 451

50. The Picture of Dorian Gray

49 is Dune
I am surprised Dune was left for so long

>>21431017
>97 is The Cremation of Sam McGee
Correct. Robert Service:
"There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee."

>>21431042
>58 is Wise Blood
Correct. "Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car."

>>21431055
>50 is Oscar Wilde
Perhaps, but what work?

>>21431074
>41 is Far from the Madding Crowd
Correct. "When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread, till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to mere chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun."

>>21431088
>43 is thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird.
Correct. Wallace Stevens:
"Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird."

>>21431523
You mean Pale Fire, surely for 6.

>>21431523
>>21431561

>6. Pale Ice, Nabokov
Sort of. Pale Fire:
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane"

>25. The Gunslinger, King
Correct. The Dark Tower #1:
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

>51. Paul Clifford
Right (not 26). Supposedly the worst opening sentence ever but I think it's pretty good. Take it away, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton:
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

>92. Neuromancer
Right. (Not 27). "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

>99. Fahrenheit 451
Correct. (Not 28.) "It was a pleasure to burn."

>50. The Picture of Dorian Gray
Correct. "The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn."

>>21431567
>49 is Dune
Correct. "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."

>>21431528
Someone got Frank Herbert (Dune, #49) so just the other thirteen to go. Cormac McCarthy & John Williams are /lit/ meme works. Some of the other authors only wrote one book anyone's heard about.

59 is Dover Beach, Arnold

96 is Riddley Walker (R. Hoban)

68 is The War of the Worlds by Wells

88 is Earthly Powers (Burgess)

39 is Stoner, of course.

26 is Elegy written in a country churchyard (T. Gray)

42 is The Red Badge of Courage

65 is The Thought Fox, Hughes

77 is Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake

90 is Atonement, McEwan

30 is Suttree

47 is Brighton Rock

Hence 89 must be by DH Lawrence, the last remaining

89 is Snake

And we are done.

>>21431630
>59 is Dover Beach, Arnold
Right. "The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair."

>>21431653
>96 is Riddley Walker (R. Hoban)
Correct. The style is a giveaway if you know the work. "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen."

>>21431655
>68 is The War of the Worlds by Wells
Correct. A famous one: "No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."

>>21431665
>88 is Earthly Powers (Burgess)
Right. The opening line is a lot more famous than the book: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the Archbishop had come to see me."

>>21431684
>39 is Stoner, of course.
Of course. "William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen."

>>21431689
>26 is Elegy written in a country churchyard (T. Gray)
Correct:
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me."

>>21431704
>42 is The Red Badge of Courage
Right. "The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting."

>>21431719
>65 is The Thought Fox, Hughes
Right:
"I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move."

>>21431722
>77 is Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake
Correct. "Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls."

>>21431726
>90 is Atonement, McEwan
Right. "The play – for Which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch." Another tricky one I think. Used to be quite a well-known novel but probably it's getting forgotten.

>>21431732
>30 is Suttree
Correct. Cormac going Full Cormac right out of the gate: "Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you."

>>21431740
>47 is Brighton Rock
Correct. Graham Greene: "Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him."

>>21431742
>89 is Snake
D.H.Lawrence, right.
"A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pajamas for the heat,
To drink there."

Well done /lit/, and Merry Christmas to all.