# Guess the book **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 6, 2000, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004 "2000-11-06T21:03:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/21 "2000-11-10T19:54:13Z")
Zoggie’s quoting one of my favorite authors – Howard Philips Lovecraft. If I mistake not, this is the opening from “The Call of Cthulhu”. That might be wrong, but Lovecraft it certainly is. ---
**Author:** ![Nukeman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce7236/32.png) [@Nukeman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nukeman)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/22 "2000-11-10T23:15:09Z")
Well done bob, how on earth did you guess? hmm 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2000, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/23 "2000-11-10T23:19:11Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CalMeacham \* > \*\*Zoggie’s quoting one of my favorite authors – Howard Philips Lovecraft. If I mistake not, this is the opening from “The Call of Cthulhu”. That might be wrong, but Lovecraft it certainly is. \*\* Sorry Cal…it wasn’t Lovecraft a’tall. It was Shirley Jackson… So now does Bob get to post something that we hafta guess? And also…I’m so glad I can access this page…I couldn’t at all before. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2000, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/24 "2000-11-11T03:28:10Z")
Hey come on…is anyone even still playing anymore?! ---
**Author:** ![ThreeLeggedBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThreeLeggedBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThreeLeggedBob)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2000, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/25 "2000-11-13T19:07:15Z")
Was I really right with Winnie-the-Pooh? Wasn’t sure. I did know the Joyce reference, but I also thought Jackson was Lovecraft. ## Anyway, new game: 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. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular. ---
**Author:** ![Gregor\_Samsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a6a055/32.png) [@Gregor\_Samsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gregor_Samsa)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/26 "2000-11-14T13:17:34Z")
> [@](#): > > ## \*Originally posted by ThreeLeggedBob \* \*\* > > 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. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in > the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular. \*\* Is that from Josef Conrad’s _Heart of Darkness_? ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/27 "2000-11-14T13:44:32Z")
It is Conrad, I can tell you that much. ---
**Author:** ![ThreeLeggedBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThreeLeggedBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThreeLeggedBob)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/28 "2000-11-14T14:32:40Z")
Yes to Conrad, different title… ---
**Author:** ![Tansu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/67e7ee/32.png) [@Tansu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tansu)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/29 "2000-11-14T14:52:43Z")
Lord Jim. I suggest someone else comes up with a new one. I’m at work and not overly noveled up at the moment. Oddly enough, the only two novels on my desk are Lord Jim and Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist. ---
**Author:** ![ThreeLeggedBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThreeLeggedBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThreeLeggedBob)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/30 "2000-11-14T16:06:13Z")
## Okay, easy one. When someone else gets it, he picks the next game. IT hath reached me, O auspicious King, that there was a fisherman well stricken in years who had a wife and three children, and withal was of poor condition. Now it was his custom to cast his net every day four times, and no more. On a day he went forth about noontide to the seashore, where he laid down his basket and, tucking up his shirt and plunging into the water, made a cast with his net and waited till it settled to the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/31 "2000-11-14T16:45:36Z")
_The Arabian Nights_? ---
**Author:** ![ThreeLeggedBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThreeLeggedBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThreeLeggedBob)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/32 "2000-11-14T16:51:00Z")
Correct. Your turn. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/33 "2000-11-14T17:11:49Z")
"She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment day. Seen near, it was a chaos – hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing – half lava, half glow. I had heard this woman termed ‘plain,’ and I expected bony hardness and grimness – something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame. For a while – a long while – I thought it was only a woman, though a unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By and by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil." ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/34 "2000-11-16T04:32:46Z")
I guess…we’re all morons. Hint? 🙂 Please? ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/35 "2000-11-16T18:02:59Z")
OK … British female author; not her most famous work, but still fairly widely read. And it happens to be one of my very favorite books of all time. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/36 "2000-11-16T18:21:17Z")
Anne Rice? ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/37 "2000-11-16T20:13:00Z")
I don’t know the answer, but Anne Rice is not a Brit. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/38 "2000-11-16T20:34:37Z")
Should be. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/39 "2000-11-16T20:59:20Z")
Dumaurier? I’m pathetic, I know :p, but that’s the only female Brit author I know. That I can think of right now, that is… And yes, i’ve tried searching google for this. It won’t work! ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2000, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004/40 "2000-11-16T22:19:35Z")
Nope, not DuMaurier, but definitely one of DuMaurier’s major influences… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guess-the-book/40004.md?page=3)