Bits of books that have stayed with you

[idioteque]

the bit in Kafka on the Shore where he starts going into the woods. just how he describes being lost in the woods

 

[the button]

9 billion names of God... It's actually "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out." though.

My version wasn't bad for 30 years since I read it though.

 

[cesare]

Oh yes and Elric of Melnibone's sword sucking up souls

 

[Detroit City]

Not necessarily the whole book, but scenes or plot threads.

The Plague by Albert Camus and Один день Ивана Денисовича Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha by Solzhenitsyn...

 

[MightyAphrodite]

"look noah, i'm a bird, now say youre a bird..."

"if youre a bird, i'm a bird."



ah noah and allie.


i will always *heart* that. :-o

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Not necessarily the whole book, but scenes or plot threads.

I read The naked & the dead when I was 18/19 -- can't remember much about the book, but I do remember the guy getting a telegram to say his wife had died. Then, of course, cos he's miles away from home he keeps getting her letters that she sent beforehand. He knows when she dies, so as the dates on the letters get closer and closer, he knows that they're going to stop.

Another one would be the death of Tess' child in Tess of the D'Urbervilles: "So died Sorrow, the undesired." (This is 20 years later, so I can't remember whether it's "So died..." or "Thus died..."). But anyway.

I'm a cheery soul.

Well, there's the scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where the Samoan lawyer is stoned on acid, listening to White Rabbit, while soaking in a bathtub. He tells HST, that when the song hits the crescendo, that he should toss the radio, plugged into a socket via cord, into the water with him. He has a huge hunting knife in his hand, under the water, so HST has to do something. What he does is at the climax of the song, he tosses a canteloupe into the water with the Samoan, who is grooving with his eyes closed, and then watches as the Samoan thrashes in the water like a shark in a cooking pot.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Then there's the scene at the end of Childhood's End, by Arthur C Clarke, where the alien ship has landed, and the alien asks two kids to come forward into the ship, and he walks out with the kids on each arm, and the alien looks exactly like The Devil: red, two horns, all the rest.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Then there's the scene in Tourist Season [I think: one of Hiassen's first four] where the PI tries to break into the trailer, but a pit bull jumps up and bites onto the man's arm and won't let go, so the man shoots the dog. But the dog's bite won't release, so the man cuts the body off the head, and spends the rest of the book with a progressively more rotten dog's head attached to his forearm.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Then there's the scene in Clear and Present Danger where the Marines go into Columbia to run a clandestine mission against the drug lords, but it goes sideways and the marines get ambushed.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Then there's the bit in the Outsider by Camus where he's sitting in a room in Algeria thinking about his mother.

 

[spring-peeper]

What a gruesome collection

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Then there was the scene in The City And The Pillar where the protagonist and his army buddy get two girls and go back to a hotel room, and they're supposed to fuck the girls on two separate beds, but the protagonist isn't really into it.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Sorry for all the remembrance: I was just trying to spend some time away from the BNP thread...

 

[spring-peeper]

Can't blame you for that

But it does make for interesting reading.....

 

[The Octagon]

First chapter of The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold), chilling stuff.

The Theme Park takedown in Rainbow Six (Tom Clancy), great action description.

The Bastogne section of Band of Brothers (Stephen Ambrose) (are we allowed non-fiction?)

 

[Santino]

The last chapter or two of Use of Weapons by Iain M., as the dreadful truth slowly dawned on me.

The final chapters of The System of the World/Baroque Cycle, juxtaposing the trial of the Pyx and the scenes outside (this sentence vague-ified for spoilers).