Last Lines That Linger

     Usually, the focus is on the best first lines in literature. We are guilty of this, too. After all, the first lines are what draw you into a book. These are the ones we remember best. Shouldn't the last lines leave you feeling that the journey was worthwhile? Here are some of our favorites:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
     ~ The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'"
     ~ The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

"I don't hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I don't. I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!"
     ~ Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner

"After all, tomorrow is another day."
     ~ Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

"'All that is very well,' answered Candide, 'but let us cultivate our garden.'"
     ~ Candide - Voltaire

"Whether or not they lived happily ever after is not easily decided."
     ~ The African Queen - C. S. Forester

"Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is."
     ~ Continental Drift - Russell Banks

"I am haunted by waters."
     ~ A River Runs Through It - Norman MacLean

"Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain."
     ~ The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy

"To us - and snails, God bless them!"
     ~ The Book and the Brotherhood - Iris Murdoch

"And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea."
     ~ Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier


Funnily enough, Rebecca also made it on our list of best first lines!


- Frances & Rose

Abandoned Books

     There have been several posts on other book blogs (see here) lately about abandoned books - books you just can't finish. I normally don't give up on a book. I put so much effort into choosing them that I'm almost certain to like them.
     If you've read any of our posts or our lists of books read in 2010, you'll know that I've recently become a fan of Iris Murdoch. I've read The Sea, The Sea, The Book and the Brotherhood, The Sandcastle, and The Bell, to name a few. Last week, I started reading The Red and the Green, which is about Irish rebellion. I made it to page 180, but I couldn't read another page! Unlike her other books, this focuses on political issues to the point that they detracted from the emphasis on characters and relationships that she explores so well in her other works.
     Maybe I'll pick it up again someday.  I'd love to hear from anyone who has read The Red and The Green and enjoyed it.

- Frances

Bookish Quotes #4

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."
     ~ Anna Quindlen

"Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in themselves."
     ~ Anne Fadiman

Hook, Line, and Sinker! (Great First Lines)

     I'm currently re-reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (for my Cornwall challenge) and reading for the first time The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley. These two books have two of the most memorable first lines in literature:

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

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." ~ The Go-Between

     Isn't it odd how some first lines stay with you forever? First lines really do play an important part in any novel or short story. When well crafted, they pull you into the fictional world immediately. They are certainly not the deciding factor in whether or not I will finish a novel, but a glance at the first line of a book is often what triggers a purchase or a library check-out. Here are a few other personal favorites (feel free to share yours!):

"Call me Ishmael." ~ Moby Dick by Herman Melville

"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


"I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story." ~ Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." ~ I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

"The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child." ~ The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

"On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on." ~ Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"All children, except one, grow up." ~ Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." ~ The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

"The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation." ~ The Secret History by Donna Tartt

     First lines also provide great fodder for book trivia. In the Neil Simon film Max Dugan Returns, Brian (Donald Sutherland) quizzes Nora (Marsha Mason), an English teacher, to see if she can name the novel from the first line. She guesses James Joyce's Ulysses before he finishes the line, "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed."


- Frances

"If I am found with amnesia..."

     We came across a quote from Guy Gavriel Kay, the author of Song of Arbonne and Tigana, describing a wonderful gimmick that every book lover should enjoy.

"My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, "If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read..." And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out what happens next...the feeling that keeps you up half the night, the feeling that comes before the plot's been learned."

     This made us start thinking about books that we would not want to have missed reading. Ours are not for the suspense factor that Kay's brother sought but for the sheer experience of reading them. Here are our lists:

Frances ~
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - I read this when I was 12 and home from school with the flu.  Perhaps this heightened my perception of the novel at the time but it has remained a favorite.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë -  This one I read at age 12 or 13 as well when I was particularly susceptible to wild romance on the moors.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - I've read it over and over but I never tire of it.  I've even dreamt I went to Manderley!

The Complete Works of Shakespeare -If I could only list one book, this tome would be the one.  I know I'm cheating by including the complete works, but what can I say?  This one volume contains the essential knowledge of people, love, and life.  I wouldn't want to navigate the recovery from amnesia without it!

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - I love Thomas Hardy but this is my favorite of his novels.  Gabriel Oak rivals Mr. Rochester as my biggest literary crush!

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - I think I was the only one in my eleventh grade English class who loved this book.  I have read it many time since just for pleasure (I know!).  This is my favorite Hawthorne.

Rose ~

Green Darkness by Anya Seton - Outside of children's books, this is the only book I remember reading by flashlight. I stayed up most of the night trying to find out how the characters' past lives fit with their present. For that alone, it would be an interesting read with amnesia.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - Frances says, "Rose would not be Rose without this book." I think she's right. I've read it countless times and currently own four copies. If I owned one book, this would be the one.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White - As if I needed another reason to love Arthur and Merlin!

English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee - I don't think this is a very well-known book, but it sympathizes with anyone who has been in the back of beyond.

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino - This book captures every child's dream of living in the trees, but is not in the least a children's book.

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy - This is the only Hardy I have read so far, but I imagine it will be my favorite Hardy for some time to come.

Bookish Quotes #3

"What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us."
     ~ Thomas Carlyle

"'Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are' is true enough but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread."
     ~ François Muriac

Bookish Quotes #2

"We read to know we are not alone."
     ~ C.S. Lewis

"Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere."
     ~ Jean Rhys

Bookish Quotes

Introducing our new weekly feature: Bookish Quotes! Every week we will post two quotes about books and the art of reading. Enjoy!


"I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library."
     ~ Jorge Luis Borges

"Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack."
     ~ Virginia Woolf

One Book, Two Book, Three Book, Four...and Ten!

 We couldn't resist copying this from Stuck In A Book, so here are our "five" books (except that there are really ten - we're both terrible at math).

1. The book I'm currently reading:

 Frances

The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch – I discovered Iris Murdoch in 2010, and this is my latest of her books. If it’s anything like the others I’ve read, it won’t disappoint!

Rose

 

The Hollow by Agatha Christie – I tried to read this once before but was distracted by a large assembly happening around me (I’m never good at reading in large public places). So, I’m going to give this Poirot another go. If I finish, it will be the first Poirot that I’ve ever read.

 

2. The last book I finished:

Frances

Saratoga Trunk by Edith Ferber - This was...disappointing. It won a Pulitzer Prize, so expected it to be better. I read afterwards that she had initially written it as a play, which explains a lot. At the time, it was praised for capturing dialects, but I felt they were contrived.

 Rose

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - See our post about Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. I doubt it will be easy to follow up such a great read!

3. The next book I want to read:

 Frances

A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy - I adore Thomas Hardy, and this is a lesser-known novel that I found listed on Classic Bookshelf.

 Rose

 We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - I have read this book before several years ago, but who could resist re-reading Shirley Jackson? I may change my mind tomorrow, but today I'm willing to say that We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Shirley Jackson at her best.

4. The last book I bought:

Frances

The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch - I bought this at a library sale. It was my first Iris Murdoch and my favorite, so far.

Rose

  

 Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain - I found this at the Book Nook and bought it for myself for my birthday. It sounded like an interesting take on the cultural/political revolution set in 1930's India.

5. The last book I was given:

 Frances

Losing Battles by Eudora Welty - I read this several years ago with a book club, but never had my own copy of the book. Rose gave it to me for Christmas.

Rose

Hundraåringen by Jonas Jonasson - I won this book in a giveaway on the Swedish blog Transparent Swedish. It was actually sent to me by the author himself, signed. Unfortunately, my Swedish isn't up to par, and it may take me a while before I can read further than the first chapter. It does, however, look great on my bookshelf! Tack så mycket, Herr Jonasson!