When is a title drop not a title drop? When it’s a bit subtler. Below are one hundred extracts to identify in which the title of the work (usually a physical object) is encountered, described or mentioned (usually for the first time).

Translations marked [*]. Hints on request.


The authors:

Douglas Adams, Richard Adams, Renata Adler, Poul Anderson, V. C. Andrews, Jane Austen

Iain Banks, Julian Barnes, Donald Barthelme, Samuel Beckett, Alan Bennett, R. D. Blackmore, J. L. Borges, Ray Bradbury, Richard Brautigan, Flann O’Brien, Patrick O’Brien, Ann Bronte, Robert Browning, John Buchan, Charles Bukowski, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Edgar Rice Burroughs

Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, John Cheever, Agatha Christie, Wilkie Collins, Flannery O’Connor, Joseph Conrad, Hart Crane

Michael Crichton, e. e. cummings

Roald Dahl, Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Dunsany

George Eliot

William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, C. S. Forester, E. M. Forster, Janet Frame

Stella Gibbons, William Gibson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Nikolai Gogol, William Golding, Arthur Gordon

Dashiell Hammett, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Patricia Highsmith, William Hope Hodgson, Robert E. Howard

Henry James, Robinson Jeffers,Ernst Junger

John Keats, Rudyard Kipling

Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence, Henry Lawson, Laurie Lee, Nikolai Leskov, C. S. Lewis, Thomas Ligotti, H. P. Lovecraft

Katherine Mansfield, W. Somerset Maugham, Guy De Maupassant, Larry McMurtry, Henry Miller, Haruki Murakami, Iris Murdoch

Larry Niven

Gary Paulsen, Mervyn Peake, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, E. Annie Proulx

Damon Runyon

Saki, Walter Scott, Varlam Shalamov, John Steinbeck, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rex Stout, Harriet Beecher Stowe

James Thurber, Leo Tolstoy, Frank Tuohy

John Updike

Jules Verne

H. G. Wells, T. H. White, Oscar Wilde, Gene Wolfe

1)
The American wife stood at the window looking out. Outside right under their window a cat was crouched under one of the dripping green tables. The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on.

‘I’m going down and get that kitty,’ the American wife said.


2)
He was a curious mixture of things to me on that first occasion; he had the general physique of a bull, the tenacity of a vulture, the agility of a leopard, the tenderness of a lamb, and the coyness of a dove. He had a curious overgrown head which fascinated me and which, for some reason, I took to be singularly Athenian. His hands were rather small for his body, and overly delicate. He was a vital, powerful man, capable of brutal gestures and rough words, yet somehow conveying a sense of warmth which was soft and feminine. There was also a great element of the tragic in him which his adroit mimicry only enhanced. He was extremely sympathetic and at the same time ruthless as a boor. He seemed to be talking about himself all the time, but never egotistically. He talked about himself because he himself was the most interesting person he knew. I liked that quality very much — I have a little of it myself.


3)
“All right, sir. Grand Master Villiers de l’Isle d’Adam had this foot-high jeweled bird made by Turkish slaves in the castle of St. Angelo and sent it to Charles, who was in Spain. He sent it in a galley commanded by a French knight named Cormier or Corvere, a member of the Order.” His voice dropped to a whisper again. “It never reached Spain.”


4)
I ordered this, this clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.


5)
He swung back the net, heavier now that it was wet. He had to turn his head, but out of the corner of his eye he saw two swirls in the black water just off the starboard bow. They were about eight feet apart, and they had the sluggish oily look that marks the presence of something big just below the surface. His conscious mind had no time to function, but instinct told him that the net was wide enough to cover both swirls if he could alter the direction of his cast. He could not halt the swing, but he shifted his feet slightly and made the cast off balance. He saw the net shoot forward, flare into an oval, and drop just where he wanted it.

Then the sea exploded in his face.

6)
“You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

“It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?”

“Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.”


7)
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful — a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.


8)
There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty weapons of various kinds, distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory: tapestry and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams. The haggard aspect of the little old man was wonderfully suited to the place; he might have groped among old churches and tombs and deserted houses and gathered all the spoils with his own hands.


9)
Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is it all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet bears away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of stone a doll’s hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs . . .


10)
‘This is a brave night!’

I swung round in amazement. Before me, almost blocking out the night, was an enormous policeman. He looked a policeman from his great size but I could see the dim sign of his buttons suspended straight before my face, tracing out the curvature of his great chest. His face was completely hidden in the dark and nothing was clear to me except his overbearing policemanship, his massive rearing of wide strengthy flesh, his domination and his unimpeachable reality. He dwelt upon my mind so strongly that I felt many times more submissive than afraid. I eyed him weakly, my hands faltering about the bars of the bicycle. I was going to try to make my tongue give some hollow answer to his salutation when he spoke again, his words coming in thick friendly lumps from his hidden face.

‘Will you follow after me till I have a conversation with you privately,’ he said, ‘if it was nothing else you have no light on your bicycle and I could take your name and address for the half of that.’

11)
The shimmering shaft of the tower rose frostily in the stars. In the sunlight it shone so dazzlingly that few could bear its glare, and men said it was built of silver. It was round, a slim perfect cylinder, a hundred and fifty feet in height, and its rim glittered in the starlight with the great jewels which crusted it.


12)
“Who hath done this, Bennet?” Richard asked, still holding the arrow in his hand.

“Nay, the saints know,” said Hatch. “Here are a good two-score Christian souls that we have hunted out of house and holding, he and I. He has paid his shot, poor shrew, nor will it be long, mayhap, ere I pay mine. Sir Daniel driveth overhard.”


13)
“At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle — as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D—— cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D——, the minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.”


14)
Akaki went on his way in high spirits. Every moment he was acutely conscious of having a new cloak on, and smiled with sheer self-complacency. His head was filled with only two ideas: first that the cloak was warm, and secondly that it was beautiful. Without noticing anything on the road, he marched straight to the chancellery, took off his treasure in the hall, and solemnly entrusted it to the porter’s care.

[*]


15)
When I came to myself again, my hands were full of young grass and mould, and a little girl kneeling at my side was rubbing my forehead tenderly with a dock-leaf and a handkerchief.

“Oh, I am so glad,” she whispered softly, as I opened my eyes and looked at her; “now you will try to be better, won’t you?”

I had never heard so sweet a sound as came from between her bright red lips, while there she knelt and gazed at me; neither had I ever seen anything so beautiful as the large dark eyes intent upon me, full of pity and wonder. And then, my nature being slow, and perhaps, for that matter, heavy, I wandered with my hazy eyes down the black shower of her hair, as to my jaded gaze it seemed; and where it fell on the turf, among it (like an early star) was the first primrose of the season. And since that day I think of her, through all the rough storms of my life, when I see an early primrose.

16)
She reached over the back of the seat and brought up a paper bag. ‘I got something for you, for the trip.’

Brian took the bag and opened the top. Inside there was a hatchet, the kind with a steel handle and a rubber handgrip. The head was in a stout leather case that had a brassriveted belt loop.

‘It goes on your belt.’ His mother spoke without looking at him. There were some farm trucks on the road now and she had to weave through them and watch the traffic. “The man at the shop said you could use it. You know. In the woods with your father.’

Dad, he thought. Not ‘my father’. My dad.


17)
As we neared this new thing, I saw that I had not been mistaken in my first impression. It was undoubtedly a portion of some ruined building; yet now I made out that it was not built upon the edge of the chasm itself, as I had at first supposed; but perched almost at the extreme end of a huge spur of rock that jutted out some fifty or sixty feet over the abyss. In fact, the jagged mass of ruin was literally suspended in midair.


18)
Down through the forest towards the river ran a steep path; where it reached the marshy flats it degenerated into something worse than a track. Sometimes they were up to their knees in mud. They slipped and staggered, sweating under the scanty load of Rose’s possessions. Sometimes tree roots gave them momentary foothold. At every step the rank marigold smell of the river grew stronger in their nostrils. Then they emerged from the dense vegetation into blinding sunlight again. The launch swung at anchor, bow upstream, close to the water’s edge. The rushing brown water made a noisy ripple round anchor chain and bows.


19)
“When she was nineteen Miss Saeki wrote a poem, set it to music, and played the piano and sang it. It was a melancholy melody, innocent and lovely. The lyrics, on the other hand, were symbolic, contemplative, hard to figure out. The contrast gave the song a kind of spirit and immediacy. Of course the whole song, lyrics and melody, was her way of crying out to her boyfriend, so far away. . . . ”

[*]


20)
To play kindergarten teachers was great fun, or could have been, if our student body had been the least bit willing. But as soon as we had breakfast finished, our dishes washed and put away, our food stashed in the coldest place, and the hour of ten had come and gone with servants from the second floor, Chris and I each dragged a wailing twin up into the attic schoolroom. There we could sit at the student desks and make a grand mess cutting flower forms from the colored craft paper, using the crayons to glorify the colors with stripes and polka-dots. Chris and I made the best flowers — what the twins made looked like colored blobs.

“Modern art,” Chris named the flowers they made.

21)
The ring was huge in diameter, wide enough to stretch half across the darkened side of the dome; but it was narrow, not much thicker than the light source at its axis. The near side was black and, where it cut across the light, sharp-edged. Its further side was a pale blue ribbon across space.


22)
I smiled a little at the mock intrigue of the object, then gripped it from either side, gently, and placed my thumbs precisely over the fresh thumbprints. I applied pressure with each thumb, and a shallow drawer popped open at the front of the box. As hoped, Plomb had been watching me as I went through these meaningless motions.

“What do you have there?” he asked.

“Patience, Plomb. You will see,” I answered while delicately removing two sparkling items from the drawer: one a small and silvery knife which very much resembled a razor-sharp letter opener, and the other a pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles.


23)
She was confounded by the number of dials and switches on the instrument panel, and she studied them thoroughly before she put the plug into a wall socket and turned the radio on. The dials flooded with a malevolent green light, and in the distance she heard the music of a piano quintet. The quintet was in the distance for only an instant; it bore down upon her with a speed greater than light and filled the apartment with the noise of music amplified so mightily that it knocked a china ornament from a table to the floor. She rushed to the instrument and reduced the volume.


24)
At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails
And went on reading.


25)
To pass between lodges of a modern appearance, to find herself with such ease in the very precincts of the abbey, and driven so rapidly along a smooth, level road of fine gravel, without obstacle, alarm, or solemnity of any kind, struck her as odd and inconsistent. She was not long at leisure, however, for such considerations. A sudden scud of rain, driving full in her face, made it impossible for her to observe anything further, and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of her new straw bonnet; and she was actually under the abbey walls, was springing, with Henry’s assistance, from the carriage, was beneath the shelter of the old porch, and had even passed on to the hall, where her friend and the general were waiting to welcome her, without feeling one awful foreboding of future misery to herself, or one moment’s suspicion of any past scenes of horror being acted within the solemn edifice.

26)
Huge and squat, the jar lay on the grass like an un-exploded bomb. We lifted it up, unscrewed the stopper, and smelt the whiff of fermented apples. I held the jar to my mouth and rolled my eyes sideways, like a beast at a water-hole.


27)
‘Listen, Mr Chip, it wasn’t like any dream I’ve ever had before. A great hand came down from the sky, like the arm and hand of God. Enormous, the size of a mountain. And I knew at the time how important it was; the hand was closed, made into a rocklike fist, and I knew it contained something of value so great that my life and the lives of everyone else on Earth depended on it. And I waited for the fist to open, and it did open. And I saw what it contained.”

‘An aerosol spray can,’ Don Denny said dryly.


28)
He saw her plain, lying there a cable’s length from him in the brilliant sunshine of English Harbour, a trim, beautiful little eight-and-twenty, French-built with a bluff bow and lovely lines, weatherly, stiff, a fine sea-boat, fast when she was well-handled, roomy, dry... He had sailed in her under a taut captain and an even tauter first lieutenant — had spent hours and hours banished to the masthead — had done most of his reading there — had carved his initials on the cap: were they still to be seen?


29)
. . . . She heard the hooves and wheels come nearer, up the steep road.
The buckskin mare, leaning against the breastpiece, plodded into sight round the wet bank.
The pale face of the driver followed; the burnt-out eyes; they had fortune in them. He sat twisted
On the seat of the old buggy, leading a second horse by a long halter, a roan, a big one,
That stepped daintily; by the swell of the neck, a stallion.


30)
The farmhouse was a long, low building, two-storied in parts. Other parts of it were three-storied. Edward the Sixth had originally owned it in the form of a shed in which he housed his swineherds, but he had grown tired of it, and had had it rebuilt in Sussex clay. Then he pulled it down. Elizabeth had rebuilt it, with a good many chimneys in one way and another.

The Charleses had let it alone; but William and Mary had pulled it down again, and George the First had rebuilt it. George the Second, however, burned it down. George the Third added another wing. George the Fourth pulled it down again.

By the time England began to develop that magnificent blossoming of trade and imperial expansion which fell to her lot under Victoria, there was not much of the original building left, save the tradition that it had always been there. It crouched, like a beast about to spring, under the bulk of Mockuncle Hill. Like ghosts embedded in brick and stone, the architectural variations of each period through which it had passed were mute history. It was known locally as “The King’s Whim.”

31)
The shimmering projectile rested on a blunt cone of latticed steel which rose from the floor between the tips of three severely back-swept delta fins that looked as sharp as surgeons’ scalpels. But otherwise nothing marred the silken sheen of the fifty feet of polished chrome steel except the spidery fingers of two light gantries which stood out from the walls and clasped the waist of the rocket between thick pads of foam-rubber.


32)
What my eyes saw was simultaneous; what I shall write is successive, because language is successive. Something of it, though, I will capture.

Under the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness. At first I thought it was spinning; then I realized that the movement was an illusion produced by the dizzying spectacles inside it.

[*]


33)
In front it had a neat garden-patch, where, every summer, strawberries, raspberries, and a variety of fruits and vegetables, flourished under careful tending. The whole front of it was covered by a large scarlet bignonia and a native multiflora rose, which, entwisting and interlacing, left scarce a vestige of the rough logs to be seen. Here, also, in summer, various brilliant annuals, such as marigolds, petunias, four-o’clocks, found an indulgent corner in which to unfold their splendors, and were the delight and pride of Aunt Chloe’s heart.


34)
‘ . . . I am alone; — my bugle-strain
May call some straggler of the train;
Or, fall the worst that may betide,
Ere now this falchion has been tried.’

But scarce again his horn he wound,
When lo! forth starting at the sound,
From underneath an aged oak
That slanted from the islet rock,
A damsel guider of its way,
A little skiff shot to the bay,
That round the promontory steep
Led its deep line in graceful sweep,
Eddying, in almost viewless wave,
The weeping willow twig to rave,
And kiss, with whispering sound and slow,
The beach of pebbles bright as snow.


35)
Toby sat quite still on the seat of the tractor. Then he breathed out slowly and rubbed his hands over his face and brows. He felt rather as if he would like now to crawl away somewhere and go to sleep. The last few minutes had been too crammed with experience. He began to climb from his seat and was mildly surprised to find that the extreme tension of his muscles had made him stiff. He got down and leaned over to rub his leg. He was amazed to find himself naked except for the bathing trunks.

“Toby, you were marvellous!” said Dora’s voice beside him. “You’re an absolute hero. Are you all right? Toby, we’ve succeeded!”

Toby was in no mood for transports. He sneezed and said, “Yes, yes, I’m okay. Let’s look at the thing now. It’ll probably turn out to be an old bedstead or something.” He stumbled past the dark shape in the middle of the floor and found his torch. Then he played the light upon it.

36)
We’ll take the massive profits that will be earned from the seaweed clothes, everybody will want them, Dennis Hopper, he lives at Taos, and just everybody, maybe Frank Zappa too, and Carole King, and buy a mountain where people can live in peace and harmony with a great golden telescope. She knows right where the mountain is. It’s a cheap mountain, too. It could be purchased for just a few hundred thousand dollars from the seaweed clothes profits.


37)
About half-past six, three-quarters of an hour after sunrise, the mist became more transparent. It grew thicker above, but cleared away below. Soon the isle appeared as if it had descended from a cloud, then the sea showed itself around them, spreading far away towards the east, but bounded on the west by an abrupt and precipitous coast.

Yes! the land was there. Their safety was at least provisionally insured.


38)
But the object that most drew my attention, in the mysterious package, was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded. There were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and defaced; so that none, or very little, of the glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy to perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not to be recovered even by the process of picking out the threads.


39)
SHIPS ARRIVED THIS WEEK

Bella (Canadian) from the Fishing Grounds
Farewell (Canadian) from Montreal
Foxfire (Canadian) from Bay Misery
Minatu Maru 54 (Japanese) from the Fishing Grounds
Pescamesca (Portugese) from the Fishing Grounds
Porto Santo (Manamanian) from the High Seas
Zhok (Russian) from the Fishing Grounds
Ziggurat Zap (U.S.) from the High Seas


40)
For a moment the water was a confused boiling, then the ripples widened off into the distance, coming smaller and smaller with a trace of froth at the middle, and there was a dim sound as of wood breaking under water, a sound that seemed to come to us a long time after it should have been audible. An ancient rotted plank popped suddenly through the surface, struck out a full foot of its jagged end, and fell back with a flat slap and floated off.

The depths cleared again. Something moved in them that was not a board. It rose slowly, with an infinitely careless languor, a long dark twisted something that rolled lazily in the water as it rose. It broke surface casually, lightly, without haste. I saw wool, sodden and black, a leather jerkin blacker than ink, a pair of slacks. I saw shoes and something that bulged nastily between the shoes and the cuffs of the slacks. I saw a wave of dark blond hair straighten out in the water and hold still for a brief instant as if with a calculated effect, and then swirl into a tangle again.

41)
‘You’ve caught a little frog. Look, it’s wriggling.’

He tried not to let this display of female ignorance put him off his stroke. He cast out smoothly towards the middle of the lake.

‘Didn’t you see it?’ she asked him in wonder.

‘That was the bait. When you’re fishing for pike, live frogs are good bait.’

She stared as though she could not believe him. ‘But that’s horrible. It must hurt it dreadfully. Do you know what you are? You’re a sadist.’


42)
After breakfast Scaife got from a house-agent a key for the gates of the staircases on the Ruff. I walked with him along the sands, and sat down in a nook of the cliffs while he investigated the half-dozen of them. I didn’t want to be seen, but the place at this hour was quite deserted, and all the time I was on that beach I saw nothing but the seagulls.

It took him more than an hour to do the job, and when I saw him coming towards me, conning a bit of paper, I can tell you my heart was in my mouth. Everything depended, you see, on my guess proving right.

He read aloud the number of steps in the different stairs. “Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, forty-seven,” and “twenty-one’ where the cliffs grew lower. . . .


43)
She wore a crown that seemed to be carved of great pale sapphires; she shone on those lawns and gardens like a dawn coming unaware, out of long night, on some planet nearer than us to the sun.


44)
And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at, — perhaps the chill, damp season adds a charm to the trimly kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast.


45)
“You’re Italian then, are you?”

But the reply came in English. “Oh dear no.”

“You’re English?”

To which the answer was this time, with a smile, in briefest Italian. “Che!” The dealer waived the question — he practically disposed of it by turning straightway toward a receptacle to which he had not yet resorted and from which, after unlocking it, he extracted a square box, of some twenty inches in height, covered with worn-looking leather. He placed the box on the counter, pushed back a pair of small hooks, lifted the lid and removed from its nest a drinking-vessel larger than a common cup, yet not of exorbitant size, and formed, to appearance, either of old fine gold or of some material once richly gilt. He handled it with tenderness, with ceremony, making a place for it on a small satin mat.

46)
I must pull the trigger on the old air-gun, if the wasp crawls down it; I must turn on the current if it falls into the Boiling Pool. If it ends up crawling into the Spider’s Parlour or the Venus Cave or the Antery, then I can just sit and watch nature take its course. If its path takes it to the Acid Pit or the Ice Chamber or the rather jocularly named Gents (where the instrument of ending is my own urine, usually quite fresh), then again I can merely observe.


47)
And Thee, across the harbor, silver paced
As though the sun took step of thee yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,—
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!


48)
The air temperature in the morning was sixty degrees below zero. Our thermometer was broken by the on-duty overseer, as I reported to you earlier. Nevertheless, it was possible to determine the temperature, since spit froze in mid-air.

The work gang was brought to the site on time, but could not commence work, since the boiler injector serving our area and intended to thaw the frozen ground wouldn’t work.

[*]


49)
He had not walked five hundred yards down the road when he saw, within reach of him, the plaster figure of a Negro sitting bent over on a low yellow brick fence that curved around a wide lawn. The Negro was about Nelson’s size and he was pitched forward at an unsteady angle because the putty that held him to the wall had cracked. One of his eyes was entirely white and he held a piece of brown watermelon.


50)
I needed no second invitation to sleep. Fully dressed, I fell on my paillasse with a weariness which I never felt before or since. But I did not close my eyes:for all about me there rose a sea of most extraordinary sound . . . the hitherto empty and minute room became suddenly enormous; weird cries, oaths, laughter, pulling it sideways and backward, extending it to inconceivable depth and width, telescoping it to frightful nearness. From all directions, by at least thirty voices in eleven languages (I counted as I lay Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, Turkish, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, French — and English) at distances varying from seventy feet to a few inches, for twenty minutes I was ferociously bombarded. Nor was my perplexity purely aural. About five minutes after lying down I saw (by a hitherto unnoticed speck of light which burned near the doors which I had entered) two extraordinary looking figures — one a well-set man with a big, black beard, the other a consumptive with a bald head and sickly mustache, both clad only in their knee-length chemises, hairy legs naked, feet bare — wander down the room and urinate profusely in the corner nearest me. This act accomplished, the figures wandered back, greeted with a volley of ejaculatory abuse from the invisible co-occupants of my new sleeping-apartment; and disappeared in darkness.

51)
“Haven’t you any more?”

“Why, yes. Look further; I don’t know what you like.”

Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart throbbed with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it round her throat, outside her high-necked waist, and was lost in ecstasy at her reflection in the mirror.

Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anxious doubt:

“Will you lend me this, only this?”

[*]


52)
The bees seemed to have finished their siesta; the air was filled with their humming. They were searching for food in the meadow, sweeping in clouds over the foaming flood of whiteness which stood high over the grass, or dipping into its colorful depth. They hung in clusters on the white jasmine which bordered the path; and out of the blossoming maple beside the pavilion their swarming sounded as if it came from the interior of some huge bell which reverberates for a long time after its midday peal. There was no lack of blossoms; it was one of those years when beekeepers say that “the fenceposts give honey”.

And yet there was something strange in these peaceful activities. . . .

[*]


53)
Jody couldn’t bear to look at the pony’s eyes any more. He gazed down at his hands for a moment, and he asked very shyly, “Mine?” No one answered him. He put his hand out toward the pony. Its grey nose came close, sniffing loudly, and then the lips drew back and the strong teeth closed on Jody’s fingers. The pony shook its head up and down and seemed to laugh with amusement. Jody regarded his bruised fingers. “Well,” he said with pride — “Well, I guess he can bite all right.”


54)
On an anvil it appeared highly malleable, and in the dark its luminosity was very marked. Stubbornly refusing to grow cool, it soon had the college in a state of real excitement; and when upon heating before the spectroscope it displayed shining bands unlike any known colours of the normal spectrum there was much breathless talk of new elements, bizarre optical properties, and other things which puzzled men of science are wont to say when faced by the unknown.


55)
‘Run, Andy! run!’ they shouted back at him. ‘Run!!! Look behind you, you fool!’ Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth — wedged into his broadest and silliest grin. And that wasn’t all. The dog had come round the fire to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and spitting properly.

56)
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playground and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off — the paper — in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.


57)
The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world.


58)
It was something formidable and swift, like the sudden smashing of a vial of wrath. It seemed to explode all round the ship with an overpowering concussion and a rush of great waters, as if an immense dam had been blown up to windward. In an instant the men lost touch of each other. This is the disintegrating power of a great wind: it isolates one from one’s kind. An earthquake, a landslip, an avalanche, overtake a man incidentally, as it were — without passion. A furious gale attacks him like a personal enemy, tries to grasp his limbs, fastens on his mind, seeks to rout his very spirit out of him.


59)
Now it lay naked, thick and dark brown, on an otherwise clear coffee table in the living room. The moving men weren’t coming till tomorrow morning. The walls were stripped of pictures, the book-cases of books, and the rugs had been rolled up.


60)
I had my face all lathered for shaving and the washbowl was full of hot water when suddenly I cut myself with the razor. I cut my ear. Very few men cut their ears with razors, but I do, possibly because I was taught the old Spencerian free-wrist movement by my writing teacher in the grammar grades. The ear bleeds rather profusely when cut with a razor and is difficult to get at. More angry than hurt, I jerked open the door of the medicine cabinet to see if I could find a styptic pencil and out fell, from the top shelf, a little black paper packet containing nine needles. It seems that this wife kept a little paper packet containing nine needles on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. The packet fell into the soapy water of the washbowl, where the paper rapidly disintegrated, leaving nine needles at large in the bowl. I was, naturally enough, not in the best condition, either physical or mental, to recover nine needles from a washbowl. No gentleman who has lather on his face and whose ear is bleeding is in the best condition for anything, even something involving the handling of nine large blunt objects.

61)
“Any letters?” he asked.

“Just a line from Freddy.”

“Now kiss me here; then here.”

Then, threatened again with rheumatism, he strolled to the window, opened it (as the English will), and leant out. There was the parapet, there the river, there to the left the beginnings of the hills. The cab-driver, who at once saluted him with the hiss of a serpent, might be that very Phaethon who had set this happiness in motion twelve months ago. A passion of gratitude — all feelings grow to passions in the South — came over the husband, and he blessed the people and the things who had taken so much trouble about a young fool. He had helped himself, it is true, but how stupidly!


62)
R. will be away for the night. I absolutely must see you. I shall expect you at eleven. I am desperate and if you don’t come I won’t answer for the consequences. Don’t drive up. — L.


63)
She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.


64)
The main door was now shut, concealing the curtain between which they had first entered. The knight was seated in a curious silver chair, to which he was bound by his ankles, his knees, his elbows, his wrists and his waist. There was sweat on his forehead and his face was filled with anguish.

“Come in, friends,” he said, glancing quickly up. “The fit is not yet upon me. . . . ”


65)
Her hair was raven black, and disposed in long glossy ringlets, a style of coiffure rather unusual in those days, but always graceful and becoming; her complexion was clear and pale; her eyes I could not see, for, being bent upon her prayer-book, they were concealed by their drooping lids and long black lashes, but the brows above were expressive and well defined; the forehead was lofty and intellectual, the nose, a perfect aquiline and the features, in general, unexceptionable — only there was a slight hollowness about the cheeks and eyes, and the lips, though finely formed, were a little too thin, a little too firmly compressed, and had something about them that betokened, I thought, no very soft or amiable temper; and I said in my heart — “I would rather admire you from this distance, fair lady, than be the partner of your home.”

66)
Three hundred feet the down rose vertically in a stretch of no more than six hundred — a precipitous wall, from the thin belt of trees at the foot to the ridge where the steep flattened out. The light, full and smooth, lay like a gold rind over the turf, the furze and yew bushes, the few windstunted thorn trees.


67)
Then the waiters bring on the pumpkin pie, and it is without doubt quite a large pie, and in fact it is about the size of a manhole cover, and I can see that Joel Duffle is observing this pie with a strange expression on his face, although to tell the truth I do not care for the expression on Miss Violette Shumberger’s face, either.


68)
The pearls were big, well rounded and extraordinarily alive. The necklace was made in the old style, what’s known as *refid* — strung starting at the clasp with small but perfect Black Sea pearls, then larger and larger Persian Gulf pearls, then further down came pearls as big as beans, and in the very centre three black pearls of remarkable size and the finest brilliance.

[*]


69)
PHANOCLES: Lord, this is my explosive. The whole mechanism is to be hurled from a catapult at what you wish to destroy. This will make your Empire irresistible.

MAMILLIUS: It is not my Empire!

PHANOCLES: Here is an arming vane. The pressure of the air makes it spin off — when this rod touches any solid object a compressive shock heats the explosive to the point where it catches fire. What happens then?

MAMILLIUS: Could your sister tell me?

PHANOCLES: The heat causes a sudden expansion. So what happens to the mechanism?

MAMILLIUS: It will become bigger.

PHANOCLES: No!

MAMILLIUS: Smaller?

PHANOCLES: No!

MAMILLIUS: Then, logically, Phanocles, it must remain the same size which is a pity. Any change would be for the better.

PHANOCLES: The mechanism changes — into vapour.


70)
I was driving up to London by myself. It was a lovely June day. They were haymaking in the fields and there were buttercups along both sides of the road. I was whispering along at seventy miles an hour, leaning back comfortably in my seat, with no more than a couple of fingers resting lightly on the wheel to keep her steady. Ahead of me I saw a man thumbing a lift. I touched the footbrake and brought the car to a stop beside him. I always stopped for hitch-hikers. I knew just how it used to feel to be standing on the side of a country road watching the cars go by. I hated the drivers for pretending they didn’t see me, especially the ones in big cars with three empty seats. The large expensive cars seldom stopped. It was always the smaller ones that offered you a lift, or the old rusty ones, or the ones that were already crammed full of children and the driver would say, “I think we can squeeze in one more.”

The hitchhiker poked his head through the open window and said,

“Going to London, guv’nor?”

“Yes,” I said, “Jump in.”

71)
In starting off, the boat seemed much like any other, only in every way — the flat, hard seats, the austere lines — more spare. And then, at speed, the boat, at its own angle to the sea, began to hit each wave with flat, hard, jarring thuds, like the heel of a hand against a tabletop. As it slammed along, the Italians sat, ever more low and loose, on their hard seats, while the American lady, in her eagerness, began to bounce with anticipation over every little wave. The boat scudded hard; she exaggerated every happy bounce. Until she broke her back.


72)
It was a three-foot ankus, or elephant-goad — something like a small boat-hook. The top was one round, shining ruby, and eight inches of the handle below it were studded with rough turquoises close together, giving a most satisfactory grip. Below them was a rim of jade with a flower-pattern running round it — only the leaves were emeralds, and the blossoms were rubies sunk in the cool, green stone.


73)
“ . . . Oh, how well I remember all the details of that evening! I remember how he brought the violin, how he opened the box, took off the serge embroidered by a lady’s hand, and began to tune the instrument. I can still see my wife sit down, with a false air of indifference, under which it was plain that she hid a great timidity, a timidity that was especially due to her comparative lack of musical knowledge. She sat down with that false air in front of the piano, and then began the usual preliminaries, — the pizzicati of the violin and the arrangement of the scores. I remember then how they looked at each other, and cast a glance at their auditors who were taking their seats. They said a few words to each other, and the music began. . . . ”

[*]


74)
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.


75)
“You’d like almost everything about Russian life,” he said warmly. “It’s so informal, so impulsive, so free without question. And then the peasants are so splendid. They are such human beings – yes, that is it. Even the man who drives your carriage has – has some real part in what is happening. I remember the evening a party of us, two friends of mine and the wife of one of them, went for a picnic by the Black Sea. We took supper and champagne and ate and drank on the grass. And while we were eating the coachman came up. ‘Have a dill pickle,’ he said. He wanted to share with us. That seemed to me so right, so – you know what I mean?”

76)
The whole room was dim and mellow and casual. It spoke of long occupation and familiar use and of links with tradition.

And across the old bearskin hearth rug there was sprawled something new and crude and melodramatic.

The flamboyant figure of a girl. . . .


77)
Late that night he found his way to camp and twelve hours later all the males among his darkies were back by the squirrel hole digging furiously at the side of the mountain. He told them he had discovered a rhinestone mine, and, as only one or two of them had ever seen even a small diamond before, they believed him, without question. When the magnitude of his discovery became apparent to him, he found himself in a quandary. The mountain was a diamond — it was literally nothing else but solid diamond.


78)
I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog.


79)
Revelled in the word spool. (*With relish.*) Spooool! Happiest moment of the past half million.


80)
It was a stand like any other stand, dissimilar only in incidentals to the one where he had stood each morning for two weeks; a territory new to him yet no less familiar than that other one which after two weeks he had come to believe he knew a little — the same solitude, the same loneliness through which frail and timorous man had merely passed without altering it, leaving no mark nor scar, which looked exactly as it must have looked when the first ancestor of Sam Fathers’ Chickasaw predecessors crept into it and looked about him, club or stone axe or bone arrow drawn and ready, different only because, squatting at the edge of the kitchen, he had smelled the dogs huddled and cringing beneath it and saw the raked ear and side of the bitch that, as Sam had said, had to be brave once in order to keep on calling herself a dog, and saw yesterday in the earth beside the gutted log, the print of the living foot. He heard no dogs at all. He never did certainly hear them. He only heard the drumming of the woodpecker stop short off, and knew that the bear was looking at him. He never saw it. He did not know whether it was facing him from the cane or behind him. He did not move, holding the useless gun which he knew now he would never fire at it, now or ever, tasting in his saliva that taint of brass which he had smelled in the huddled dogs when he peered under the kitchen.

Then it was gone.

81)
Mr Ramesh has obviously been expecting me because there’s a bed made up in the storeroom upstairs. I go up first and get in. When I’m in bed I can put my hand out and feel the lentils running through my fingers. When he comes up he’s put on his proper clothes. Long white shirt, sash and what not. Loincloth underneath. All spotless. Like Jesus. Only not.


82)
Time dragged — though they did not understand how the giant could be done as soon as he was, blind and without help — until he shouted: “Enter, warriors!”

They came into the bloody light. Bolverk held forth the sword. Brightly gleamed the blade, a blue tongue about whose edges little flames seemed to waver. The eyes of the dragon on the haft glittered, the gold glowed as with a shiningness of its own.

“Take it!” cried the giant.


83)
Crossing the hall, about half an hour afterwards, I was brought to a sudden standstill by an outbreak of screams from the small drawing-room. I can’t say I was at all alarmed; for I recognised in the screams the favourite large O of the Miss Ablewhites. However, I went in (on pretence of asking for instructions about the dinner) to discover whether anything serious had really happened.

There stood Miss Rachel at the table, like a person fascinated, with the Colonel’s unlucky Diamond in her hand. . . .


84)
“How does one get hold of a sword?” he continued. “Where can I steal one? Could I waylay some knight even if I am mounted on an ambling pad, and take his weapons by force? There must be some swordsmith or armourer in a great town like this, whose shop would be still open.”

He turned his mount and cantered off along the street. There was a quiet churchyard at the end of it, with a kind of square in front of the church door. In the middle of the square there was a heavy stone with an anvil on it, and a fine new sword was stuck through the anvil.

“Well,” said the Wart, “I suppose it is some sort of war memorial, but it will have to do. I am sure nobody would grudge Kay a war memorial, if they knew his desperate straits.”


85)
The little sparkling innocent waves shone now green, now grey, petticoats, lettuce leaves; the trees sighed, and told us to be quiet, hush-sh, as if something were sleeping and should not be disturbed — perhaps that was what the trees were always telling us, to hush-sh in case we disturbed something which must never ever be awakened?

86)
They went to the poolhall and Sonny got his football jacket too. Then they angled across the square to the picture show and bought their tickets. A few grade-school kids were going in. The picture was an Audie Murphy movie called The Kid from Texas, with Gale Storm.

‘Why hello, Duane,” Miss Mosey said. “I thought you was done overseas. Hope you all like the show.”

The boys planned to, but somehow the occasion just didn’t work out. Audie Murphy was a scrapper as usual, but it didn’t help. It would have taken Winchester ’73 or Red River or some big movie like that to have crowded out the memories the boys kept having. They had been at the picture show so often with Jacy that it was hard to keep from thinking of her, lithely stretching herself in the back row after an hour of kissing and cuddling. Such thoughts were dangerous to both of them.


87)
. . . he also had a device which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million “pages” could be summoned at a moment’s notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words Don’t Panic printed on it in large friendly letters.


88)
Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.


89)
Immediately, they saw it: a tiny black fleck of jagged material no larger than a grain of sand. There seemed to be bits of green mixed in with the black.

Neither man reacted, although Leavitt later recalled that he was ‘trembling with excitement. I kept thinking, if this is it, if it’s really something new, some brand new form of life . . . ’

However, all he said was, ‘Interesting.’


90)
A man on the floor in front of Peterson was waving a piece of cardboard on which something threatening was written but Peterson ignored him and concentrated on the camera with the little red light. The little red light jumped from camera to camera in an attempt to throw him off balance but Peterson was too smart for it and followed wherever it went. “My mother was a royal virgin,” Peterson said, “and my father a shower of gold. My childhood was pastoral and energetic and rich in experiences which developed my character. As a young man I was noble in reason, infinite in faculty, in form express and admirable, and in apprehension . . . ” Peterson went on and on and although he was, in a sense, lying, in a sense he was not.

91)
No doubt there comes a time for every man when by rights he should die. This, I have always felt, was mine. I have counted all the life I have held since as pure profit, an undeserved gift. I had no weapon, and my right arm was numbed and torn. The man-apes were bold now. That boldness gave me a moment more of life, for so many crowded forward to kill me that they obstructed one another. I kicked one in the face. A second grasped my boot; there was a flash of light, and I (moved by what instinct or inspiration I do not know) snatched at it. I held the Claw.

As though it gathered to itself all the corpse light and dyed it with the color of life, it streamed forth a clear azure that filled the cavern. . . .


92)
. . . he’d had a hell of a childhood, he couldn’t forget that. and the manhood: all the jobs and all the women, and then no women, and now no job. a bum at 60. finished. nothing. he had a dollar and 20 cents in cash. a week’s rent paid.


93)
Then, rising from the cellar like a June goddess, Grandma would come, something hidden but obvious under her knitted shawl. This, carried to every miserable room upstairs-and-down would be dispensed with aroma and clarity into neat glasses, to be swigged neatly. The medicines of another time, the balm of sun and idle August afternoons, the faintly heard sounds of ice wagons passing on brick avenues, the rush of silver skyrockets and the fountaining of lawn mowers moving through ant countries, all these, all these in a glass.


94)
It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place anyone could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covereed with the leafless stems of climbing roses, which were so thick that they were matted together.


95)
“Now,” he said, “please do it this way. — No, first close the door to the hall.” I went and closed the door and returned. “Thank you. Grasp the stick by its other end. Reach across the desk and catch the tip of the handle on the lower edge of the drawer-front. Push, and the drawer will open. — Wait. Open it, if you can, quite slowly; and be ready to free the stick quickly should it occur to you to use it for any other purpose. Proceed.”

I proceeded. The tip of the handle’s curve caught nicely under the edge of the drawer, but on account of the angle I had to keep the drawer wouldn’t start. I tried to push so as to open the drawer gradually, but I had to push harder, and suddenly the drawer popped out half a foot and I nearly dropped the stick. I lifted up to get the stick loose, and yelled:

“Look out!”

96)
The feathers were more wonderful than dog’s hair, for each filament was shaped within the shape of the feather, and the feathers in turn were trimmed to fit a pattern that flowed without error across the bird’s body. He lost himself in the geometrical tides as the feathers now broadened and stiffened to make an edge for flight, now softened and constricted to cup warmth around the mute flesh. And across the surface of the infinitely adjusted yet somehow effortless mechanics of the feathers played idle designs of color, no two alike, designs executed, it seemed, in a controlled rapture, with a joy that hung level in the air above and behind him.


97)
“ . . . But no, my friend,” and the boy did a little dance, brown feet printing the sand, “I am the dead, and their land.” He laughed. A gull cried. “Stay. If your woman is a ghost, she doesn’t know it. Neither will you.”


98)
. . . she saw the dun atmosphere over the blackened hills opposite, the dark blotches of houses, slate roofed and amorphous, the old church-tower standing up in hideous obsoleteness above raw new houses on the crest of the hill, the amorphous, brittle, hard edged new houses advancing from Beldover to meet the corrupt new houses from Lethley, the houses of Lethley advancing to mix with the houses of Hainor, a dry, brittle, terrible corruption spreading over the face of the land, and she was sick with a nausea so deep that she perished as she sat. And then, in the blowing clouds, she saw a band of faint iridescence colouring in faint colours a portion of the hill.


99)
Everywhere I looked there were birds. Shelf after shelf of birds, each one covered in a sprinkling of white pesticide. I was directed to the third aisle. I pushed carefully between the shelves and then looked up at a slight angle. There, standing in a line, were the Amazonian parrots. Of the original fifty only three remained. Any gaudiness in their colouring had been dimmed by the dusting of pesticide which lay over them. They gazed at me like three quizzical, sharp-eyed, dandruff-ridden, dishonourable old men. They did look – I had to admit it – a little cranky. I stared at them for a minute or so, and then dodged away.

Perhaps it was one of them.


100)
It’s not fancy, it’s just an old dark leather bridle. I don’t know much about them. But I know that one part of it fits in the mouth. That part’s called the bit. It’s made of steel. Reins go over the head and up to where they’re held on the neck between the fingers. The rider pulls the reins this way and that, and the horse turns. It’s simple. The bit’s heavy and cold. If you had to wear this thing between your teeth, I guess you’d catch on in a hurry. When you felt it pull, you’d know it was time. You’d know you were going somewhere.

rolling for first anime girl:
>70. Dahl's Hitchhiker/Fingersmith, great short story
>74. The Picture of Dorian Gray
>78. Hound of the Baskervilles
>79. Krapp's Last Tape (Beckett)
>87. The Redditor's Guide To The Galaxy
speculative:
>25. Northanger Abbey
>42. The Thirty-Nine Steps

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>>24930505
All good here:—

>70. Dahl's Hitchhiker/Fingersmith
Yes he calls himself a ‘fingersmith’ but the title is HH.
>great short story
One of the best "Unexpected" tales for my money, up there with Parson's Pleasure and Mrs Bixby.

>74. The Picture of Dorian Gray
Of course.

>78. Hound of the Baskervilles
I suppose you might argue the hound makes its first appearance in the legend Dr. Mortimer reads at the beginning but this is the best appearance obviously.

>79. Krapp's Last Tape (Beckett)
Right. The tape he actually records during the performance. SPOOOOOOL!

>87. The Redditor's Guide To The Galaxy
Of course.


>25. Northanger Abbey
Right. Catherine disappointed, expecting (hoping) to find herself in a Gothic novel.

>42. The Thirty-Nine Steps
I tried to disguise it by putting it at 42 which is one of the numbers given, but all was in vain.

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3) The Maltese Falcon
9) I want to say this is the Castle Gormenghast.
16) Gary Paulsen's Hatchet?
39) Shipping News
43) The King of Elfland's Daughter?
57) Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
65) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
77) A Diamond as Big as the Ritz?
82) The Broken Sword

3. Hammett, The Maltese Falcon? [Didn't know the name Villiers de l'Isle-Adam pops up in this]
73. Tolstoy, Kreuzer Sonata

>>24930593
few more:
47. Hart Crane, The Bridge
52. Jünger, The Glass Bees
99. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

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>>24930587
Another clean sweep here:

>3) The Maltese Falcon
Gutman telling Spade the history of the falcon.

>9) I want to say this is the Castle Gormenghast.
Right. "Gormenghast", book two of the trilogy (was meant to be seven books but mortality said otherwise, unfortunately).

>16) Gary Paulsen's Hatchet?
Right.

>39) Shipping News
Right. E A Proulx.

>43) The King of Elfland's Daughter?
Right, Lord Dunsany. Alveric makes his way into faerieland and sees Lirazel walking across the garden.

>57) Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
Correct, Robert Browning. Stopping just before the famous line makes it trickier.

>65) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Right, Anne Bronte. Gilbert gets his first look at the mysterious woman in church.

>77) A Diamond as Big as the Ritz?
Correct. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Funny little story.

>82) The Broken Sword
Right, Poul Anderson. Technically not its first appearance, but this is when it becomes a viable sword again.

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>>24930593

>3. Hammett, The Maltese Falcon?
Right, although the duck was just half-a-length faster.
> [Didn't know the name Villiers de l'Isle-Adam pops up in this]
I didn't know the name V de l'I-A at all until Gutman told me about him.

>73. Tolstoy, Kreuzer Sonata
Correct.

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>>24930616

>47. Hart Crane, The Bridge
Right. This piece is addressed to Brooklyn Bridge, so it fits the overall title of the collection.

>52. Jünger, The Glass Bees
Correct. Weird book. Better known than Eumeswil but I found it harder going. Maybe it's just more famous because it has a better title, lol.

>99. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
Correct. Sort of a joke entry since he spends the whole book trying to find this wretched parrot and finally realizes he will never know which the real one was, if it ever existed.

>>24930290
7 is keats bell dame san merci
11 is robert e howard conan tower elephant
12 is black arrow stevenson
17 house borderland by hogdson
29 is it something by jeffers? reads like his poetry. the epic set in califonia or whatever its called?
34 is walter scott lady of the lake pretty sure. the meeting with the highland scot woman after the king in diguise goes hunting and gets lost.
54 is lovecraft colour out of space
65 is lorna doone
78 gonna assume doyle and hound of the baskevilles

>>24930319
Is 49 The Artificial Nigger (O'Connor)?

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>>24930776

>7 is keats bell dame san merci
Right.

>11 is robert e howard conan tower elephant
The Tower Of The Elephant, yes.

>12 is black arrow stevenson
Correct. "The black arrow" of the title refers to the archer rather than the arrow itself but never mind, he's present by implication.

>17 house borderland by hogdson
The House On The Borderland, yes. Ghastly pig-men await.

>29 is it something by jeffers?
Could be
>reads like his poetry.
Yes, ridiculously long lines that are a pain for typesetters
> the epic set in califonia or whatever its called?
All his epics were set in California weren't they?

>34 is walter scott lady of the lake pretty sure. the meeting with the highland scot woman after the king in diguise goes hunting and gets lost.
Correct.

>54 is lovecraft colour out of space
Correct. SCIENTISTS BAFFLED! says HPL.

>65 is lorna doone
Right. R. D. Blackmore.

>78 gonna assume doyle and hound of the baskevilles
Right, although you’re not the first.

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>>24931154
>Is 49 The Artificial Nigger (O'Connor)?
Of course. Yokel father and son visit big city, see plaster nigger, have epiphany, go home sadder and wiser. More cheery lunacy from FO’C.

>17)
House on the Borderland
>20)
Flowers in the Attic
>21
Ringworld
>27
Maybe Ubik is the aerosol can here?
>49
Artificial Nigger by OConnor kek wasn't expecting this one
>65
Narnia Silver Chair
>74
Picture of Dorian Gray
>87
The Hitchhikers Guide

>>24931796
>Narnia Silver Chair
Whoops meant 64

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>>24931796
>>24931800

These are right but someone else already got there:

>17)
>House on the Borderland

>49
>Artificial Nigger by OConnor kek wasn't expecting this one

>74
>Picture of Dorian Gray

>87
>The Hitchhikers Guide


These are right and you’re the first:

>20)
>Flowers in the Attic
V. C. Andrews. It's a bit surprising /lit/ doesn't talk about this more, given the strong pro-incest contingent. Be grateful for small mercies I guess.

>21
>Ringworld
Larry Niven

>27
>Maybe Ubik is the aerosol can here?
Right. P. K Dick

>65
>Whoops meant 64
>Narnia Silver Chair
Correct. One of the entries with pretty much a title drop in there.

38: Scarlet Letter?

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>>24932638
>38: Scarlet Letter?
Correct, Hawthorne.

could 56 be the yellow wallpaper?

>>24930303
>13)
Purloined Letter by Poe?

>>24930339
>91)
Claw of the Conciliator by Wolfe

>>24930339
>94)
Maybe The Secret Garden?

>>24930328
>66)
Is this describing the large park walls and gate to Jurassic Park?

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>>24933627

>could 56 be the yellow wallpaper?
It could. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Let's find a blonde C.A.G. to match the wallpaper.

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>>24933956

>13)
>Purloined Letter by Poe?
Of course.

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>>24933991

>91)
>Claw of the Conciliator by Wolfe
Right. Not the first time in the series it appears of course but the second book is the one called The Claw.

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>>24933993

>94)
>Maybe The Secret Garden?
Correct. Frances Hodgson Burnett. I wonder if she was subconciously influenced by Alice finally breaking into the garden in Alice In Wonderland.

>>24934011

>66)
>Is this describing the large park walls and gate to Jurassic Park?
Nope. A bit lyrical for MC. This is a tricky one because I cut the extract off very short. It's one of those massive bucolic paragraphs that writers used to go in for.

bump for smarter anons than me

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Just noticed an error. This anon
>>24930776
said that 65 was Lorna Doone, and I said here
>>24931700
that that was correct. It isn't. Duck man already IDd #65 here
>>24930587
as the Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

So R. D. Blackmore is still to be found.

>>24930313
>I held the jar to my mouth and rolled my eyes
A jar that makes you roll your eyes
It must be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

>>24930316
>37)
I feel dumb guessing this but is this the island from Treasure Island?
Cause like the only thing here being mentioned is an island. And Treasure Island has the world island in the title. In fact I'd say it's the best book with Island in the title.

>>24936786
>I held the jar to my mouth and rolled my eyes
>A jar that makes you roll your eyes
>It must be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Nope. You don't typically drink out of a bell jar. The bell jar in SP’s novel is a metaphorical thing, something that sits over women and stifles them or something.

>>24936794

>37)
>I feel dumb guessing this but is this the island from Treasure Island?
Logical enough, but not correct. Robert Louis Stevenson has already been found (#12, The Black Arrow) and no author is repeated. (Also, #37 is written in third person, and TI is in first person.)

>Cause like the only thing here being mentioned is an island.
This is pretty much right, but other people wrote books with "island" in the title.

>>24936807
>but other people wrote books with "island" in the title.
Not as good as Treasure Island!

>>24936807
Mystery Island or Mysterious Island or whatever it's called by Verne.

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>>24936822
>Mystery Island or Mysterious Island or whatever it's called by Verne.
Right. ‘The Mysterious Island’. A bunch of prisoners in Andersonville POW camp in the American Civil War escape in a balloon and end up landing on this island by accident.

7) Keats' damn merciless bell.

Assuming Lorna Doone is out there, 15 might be the cutest girl remaining.

Is 19 Murakami? Most of his titles are pretty figurative, though.

>>24936779
you are correct. reread the quotes and 15 is lorna doone. when he climbs up that cliff or something to the doone stronghold idk been a while since i read it

>>24930297
1. is a Faulkner or Hemingway short story I can't remember.

3. Is the Maltese Falcon.

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>>24938816

>7) Keats' damn merciless bell.
Correct although you’re not first.

>Assuming Lorna Doone is out there, 15 might be the cutest girl remaining.
She is pretty cute it’s true.

>Is 19 Murakami?
It is.
>Most of his titles are pretty figurative, though.
It’s not a physical object.

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>>24938839
>you are correct. reread the quotes and 15 is lorna doone.
Right.
>when he climbs up that cliff or something to the doone stronghold idk been a while since i read it
He's exploring a stream and climbs up a waterfall.

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>>24938840

>1. is a Faulkner or Hemingway short story I can't remember.
It is indeed one of those. Neither author found yet.

>3. Is the Maltese Falcon.
Correct, although others got there first.

Bump.

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Bump.

A random hint:

Of those unanswered,
1, 5, 6, 14, 22, 23, 32, 36, 41, 48, 51, 55, 60, 62, 66, 67, 68, 72, 75, 80, 85, 90, 92, 96, 100
are short stories. (#60 = sort of; #80 = novella-length but still called a short story).

>>24930324
>58)
It's been an age since I've read any Michael Crichton but I vaguely recall Sphere takes an abstract angry wind form at some point because of the woman's subconscious anger at abstract patriarchy which this reminds me a bit of.

>>24943824

>58)
>It's been an age since I've read any Michael Crichton but I vaguely recall Sphere takes an abstract angry wind form at some point because of the woman's subconscious anger at abstract patriarchy which this reminds me a bit of.
I don't remember that bit, but maybe. It takes the form of water-snakes because she doesn't like snakes, I thought?

Anyway this isn’t Sphere. Would have been a bit unfair since you would expect a title drop from Sphere to be describing the thing as the actual sphere. Also MC's prose is a bit more pedestrian.

>>24943940
I recall the squid because the guy was afraid of the Verne book and hers was like a gale or tornado I thought because she hated the patriarchy or men in general so it had to take a less concrete form.

Bump.

>>24936801
Just finished reading Ariel - it’s one of the bee poems, right?

>>24939462
Is 1 Hemingway’s Cat in the Rain (or something like that, can’t remember the exact title)?

>>24945295
>Just finished reading Ariel - it’s one of the bee poems, right?
We're still talking #26? It isn't a poem. Not SP.

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>>24945306
>Is 1 Hemingway’s Cat in the Rain (or something like that, can’t remember the exact title)?
That's it. An early short story. From Men Without Women, perhaps.

>>24945345
Right, sorry - I meant 4, of course.

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>>24945365
>Right, sorry - I meant 4, of course.
That’s more like it. "The Arrival Of The Bee Box".

>>24930319
46: The Wasp Factory by Banks?

>>24930314
Could 32 be Borges?

>>24930297
2. The Great Gatsby?
4. must be the Bukowski one but I don't know him well enough to answer
5. The Old Man and the Sea
6. Room with a View
7. La Belle Damme Sans Merci
10. The Third Policeman