“She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.”
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Is that really a word? Or is it just a horrible misspelling of et cetera?
***** ***** *****
“And if it’s a boy,” said Phyllida cheerfully, “we’ll call him Prospero.”
This Rough Magic, by Mary Stewart
It’s a joke! And et cetera.
“i had thought I’d heard the last of Harold, the writing dog when he delivered his book, Bunnicula to my office some time ago.”
That’s actually from the EDITOR’S NOTE, so Chapter one of the sequel Howliday Inn reads,
“Looking back in it now, I doubt that there was any way I could have imagined what lay ahead.”
I’m re-reading old childhood favourites after stumbling across a 40th anniversary (now, like, 45) edition of Bunnicula at a book sale and promptly buying it. I then found books 2 and 4 at a used book store that I wandered into at random while visiting family and doing a bit of shopping.
They hold up! They are silly and whimsical and full of word play and every bit as enchanting as my childhood self remembers them as. My son has now read the first, a loved it.
Again, I encourage you to take any actual book discussion to the threads created for that. Here’s the current one: Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - December 2024 edition
“She liked waiting for the wave more than riding the wave.”
The Waiting by Michael Connelly
“What are you looking at?”
Bunny pulled his eyes away from what he was looking at to look at the man sitting in front of the what he was looking at.
“Three Wise Men”, a story by Caimh McDonnell
“Redmond, you’ve got to get up here, fast.”
– Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic by Redmond O’Hanlon
Josiah Harlan’s hunt for a crown began with a letter.
The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Macintyre
His children are falling from the sky.
“Bringing Up the Bodies”, Hilary Mantel
“On the little branch line which starts at Wockley Junction and conveys passengers to Eggmarsh St John, Ashenden Oakshott, Bishop’s Ickenham and other small and somnolent hamlets of the south of England the early afternoon train had just begun its leisurely journey.”
– Uncle Dynamite, by P. G. Wodehouse
“The mist that rose off the lake cut the small boat off from the rest of the world.”
The Shining Cog and Other Steampunk Tales, by Doc Coleman (This is from the first story, “The Cross of Columba”.)
“It is quite some storm.”
Grailblazers, by Tom Holt
“The death of Steve Jobs gave birth to this book.”
The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time: How Apple, Ford, Zappos, and Others Made Radical Choices That Changed the Course of Business, edited by Verne Harnish, et al.
“Sergeant Dixon!”
The Spectre General, by Theodore Cogswell
“The captain was met at the airport by a staff car.”
E for Effort, by T. L. Sherred
“During the winter of 1927-28 the federal government mobilized hundreds of agents into a force that would subsequently descend upon an isolated and decrepit seaport town in Massachusetts known as Innsmouth.”
The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft, adaptation and artwork by Gou Tanabe
“The call to adventure came in libraries, in faculty offices, at campus football games.”
Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II, by Elyse Graham
“I’m sitting in a bedroom with the kind of vaulted ceiling I wanted in my own, in a house much larger and more extravagant than the one I can’t go back to, and the fact that I can’t enjoy it upsets me.”
Cherish Farrah by Bethany Morrow
“Killing someone is easy. Hiding the body, now, that’s the hard part. That’s how you get caught.”
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
(Yes, I know it’s three sentences…)
“There was a monster in Greta Helsing’s hotel bathroom sink.”
Dreadful Company by Vivian Shaw
“You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter.”
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
“It seems strange that the story of one of the most famous American battles should begin in Europe.”
The Monitor and the Merrimac and Other Naval Battles by Fletcher Pratt
“The Game is Afoot!”
The Pocket Sherlock Holmes by Gemini
“One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father waking me on 7 February 1952 to tell me that the king was dead.”
God Save the Queen by Dennis Altman
Prologue: Like other books, this one began in a garden.
Chapter 1: Although it had just finished raining, the air was hot and close.
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C Mann