Booking Through Thursday: Endings

This week's BTT topic:
What are your favourite final sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its last sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the last line?

Yes, I did see this one coming. And at first I had a few qualms about listing some of my favorites, since they might function as "spoilers" for anyone who hasn't read the books. So for this post I'm just going to assume that everyone has read the same books I have. There – consider yourself warned.

OK, same as last week – I don't think I've ever liked or disliked a book simply because of its last line. In fact, since I left school, I don't generally finish books I don't like – so if I've gotten to the last line, chances are I've enjoyed the book at least enough to get all the way through it.

Well, the lit crit world has produced many volumes about beginnings and endings and their various aspects and functions and differences, yada yada yada. But for now, I'll just say that endings are very different from beginnings – a single final sentence isn't usually going to bring an entire story rushing back to the reader. At least, not this reader. So while I may find the endings of some books particularly memorable, it most likely won't be just the last sentence I'll remember.

With a few notable exceptions, of course.

I've deliberately left out Shakespeare and all other "drama" because I felt that would be a little like cheating. After all, the final lines are almost always the most memorable parts of plays. Anyway, here goes – starting with what I think are probably my two favorite endings in all of literature:

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away –
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see. [The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll]

. . . and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before. [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain]

I think Barbara Pym does endings better than just about any modern writer. Here are a couple of examples:

She remembered that her mother had said something about wanting to let the cottage to a former student, who was writing a novel and recovering from an unhappy love affair. But this was not going to happen, for Emma was going to stay in the village herself. She could write a novel and even, as she was beginning to realize, embark on a love affair which need not necessarily be an unhappy one. [A Few Green Leaves, Barbara Pym]

And then another picture came into my mind. Julian Malory, standing by the electric fire, wearing his speckled mackintosh, holding a couple of ping-pong bats and quoting a not very appropriate bit of Keats. He might need to be protected from the women who were going to live in his house. So, what with my duty there and the work I was going to do for Everard, it seemed as if I might be going to have what Helena called 'a full life' after all. [Excellent Women, Barbara Pym]

And then these endings, in no particular order:

"I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day." [Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell - Well, I had to include that one, didn't I?]

The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart. EXPLICIT LIBER REGIS QUONDAM REGISQUE FUTURI. The Beginning. [The Once and Future King, T.H. White]

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

"The division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray, what remains for you?"
"For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle." And he stretched his long white hand up for it. [The Sign of the Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]

He was laughing under his breath, like a cruel wolf, as he leaned over to light his last cigarette. Books play that kind of trick, he thought. And everyone gets the devil he deserves. [The Club Dumas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte; translated from the Spanish by Sonia Soto]

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." [A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens - Another must have.]

Then they packed up their bags and shrugged on their coats and uttered their thanks and were gone. [The Hills at Home, Nancy Clark]

Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. [The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson]

Reader, I married him. [Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë. This isn't the last line of the book, but it should be. It's the opening sentence of the final chapter.]

. . . and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. [Ulysses, James Joyce]

I'm sure if I thought about it a little more, I could come up with others. Maybe I will. But for now, I'll just let Molly have the final say.

Tuesday Thingers: Cataloging Sources

Wow, Marie at Boston Bibliophile just keeps coming up with more and more LT stuff I had no idea existed. This week's topic for the Tuesday Thingers group is a case in point:

What cataloging sources do you use most? Any particular reason? Any idiosyncratic choices, or foreign sources, or sources you like better than others? Are you able to find most things through LT's almost 700 sources?

I've never really checked to see what sources I use most. Be right back.

OK. Well, not surprisingly, it looks like I've used Amazon.com decidedly more often than any other source – 769 of my books were cataloged using that source. After that, 556 were manual entries (we have an awful lot of older books that we've put in manually), 110 were entered using the Library of Congress as source, and only ten used British sources (seven were British Library, and three were Oxford University).

I'm a little surprised that there weren't more British source entries – a lot of my husband's scholarly texts are Oxford University Press books. But I guess they're not so obscure that they couldn't be found using Amazon or LC info. And since I've got so many manual entries, I guess I have had a little trouble finding everything using LT's sources. But, even though I know it's perverse, I kind of like putting in all the information myself, so that's never really bothered me.

This topic reminds me of one other thing I'm interested in – which spelling do you prefer? Catalog? Catalogue? I think I tend to use the British version more often (except for this post!), since that's what I was taught as a child. But I know we Americans are supposed to use the "shortened" variety of the word, without the -ue ending. Any thoughts?

Booking Through Thursday: Beginnings

This week's BTT topic:

Here's another idea about memorable first lines from books.

What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?

You know, after fifty-some years of reading, it's very hard to remember all those first lines, folks.

I can't say that I recall ever liking or disliking a book just because of its first line, or that I remember any book specifically because of its first line. And at the moment, I can't think of any books I've disliked but remember simply because of the first line.

I always think the most successful opening lines (or first few lines, anyway) of a book convey something of the tenor of the entire book, or at least delineate the main character in an arresting and appropriate fashion. That's a tall order, and even some of the greatest works of literature don't achieve it.

From the ones that do, these are some of my favorites:

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. (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain)

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. (Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. (1984, George Orwell)

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug." (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott)

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversation?" (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)

The new curate seemed quite a nice young man, but what a pity it was that his combinations showed, tucked carelessly into his socks, when he sat down. (Some Tame Gazelle, Barbara Pym)

He – for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it – was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. (Orlando, Virginia Woolf)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. (The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger)

Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that. (Pontoon, Garrison Keillor)

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. (Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne)

Hmmmmm. Obviously, I could go on like this all day. But that's enough firsts for now.

My First Nomination!

Meghan at Medieval Bookworm has nominated my blog for its first award. Thanks very much, Meghan! How exciting!

Now I don't know who started this award, but according to Meghan the rules are these:

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3. Nominate at least seven other blogs.
4. Add links to those blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog.

Well, I'm not sure all the following will want to "play," but here goes:

Leesy Knits – Her blog isn't strictly literary, but it has lovely knitted stuff as well. And with six kids, the fact that she makes time to knit and read at all deserves some kind of award!

Books Please - Margaret seems to have very similar tastes to mine. And even when I disagree, her reviews are always literate and such a pleasure to read.

Just a Reading Fool - He says he hates memes, so he might feel the same way about these tag-award thingies. But I've been enjoying (and marveling at) his attempt to keep multiple blogs going and still manage to have interesting stuff on all of them.

late b(l)oomer - Sherry's isn't a book blog – she's an artist who also frequently posts about family history, poetry, travel, and many other aspects of her life. She has one of the most interesting and attractive blogs I've found.

Smiling Sally - Sal's blog includes book reviews as well as snippets from her everyday adventures and posts about her faith. And it's just always such an uplifting read!

Boyett-Brinkley – Again, not entirely a book blog, although it's partly that. And from time to time she features nice photos of San Antonio, my hometown. And besides, she's my cousin – and after 50-odd years of putting up with me, she needs all the awards she can get. Oops, did I say 50 years? And yet, we're both still only 39!

Tuesday Thingers: Recommendations

This week we have another interesting topic from Boston Bibliophile for the Tuesday Thingers group:

Do you use LT's recommendations feature? Have you found any good books by using it? Do you use the anti-recommendations, or the "special sauce" recommendations? How do you find out about books you want to read?

OK, once again, the short answer to the first question would be, "No, I don't." And until today, I'd never even looked at the anti-recommendations. Is that the "unsuggester"? And I'm not sure what the "special sauce" recommendations are, or how to get to them, so I guess that means I haven't used that feature either.

But even though I've never used it and don't really understand how it works, when I looked at the "unsuggester" this morning, the first title it "unsuggested" was Shopaholic Ties the Knot, by Sophie Kinsella. And since it's probably a safe bet that that's one of the last books I'd ever read, I guess maybe the unsuggester works pretty well.

As for finding out about books I might want to read, that's never really been a problem for me. I want to read everything! No seriously, I do usually have the opposite problem – finding too many books that sound really interesting.

I stay pretty tuned in to the book publishing world, so I get recommendations from all over. I read several "professional" reviews – primarily the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and the Times Literary Supplement. I also get suggestions now and then from the New Yorker, although they seem to be much more political than literary these days. And I've used the recommendations at Amazon.com, as well as their "Listmania" feature – I love making lists and reading lists made by other people.

Of course, I also love browsing bookstores and libraries. Libraries are an especially good place to find new titles and discover new authors. And there are a few discussion groups I follow on Yahoo, mainly for whodunits. Oh, and I also check Shelf Awareness every few days for recently issued titles and other book news.

But I think lately I've started relying mostly on reviews I find on the various book blogs I read. I'm finding more and more these days that my fellow bloggers do a much better job of telling me what I want to know about a book than the "professionals" of the reviewing world. I suppose that's why so many of the pros are so negative about the blogging phenomenon. They may think they see the writing on the wall – and they may be right.

The Sunday Salon: Sunday Reading (I Read Dead People)

No, I'm really not seeing ghosts or anything (I think that's just my new progressive-lens bifocals playing tricks on me). If you're interested in genealogy, you know that a lot of very useful information can be gleaned from obituaries. And since family history has been one of my hobbies for quite a while now, the obits are frequent reading matter for me. However, I find if I read them on a regular basis, it gets just a teeny bit depressing. So once a month or so, I catch up by scanning the obituary sections in several online newspapers. And today was obits day. Fortunately, I didn't find any friends or family listed.

But I did find out that a San Antonio TX legend, sportswriter Dan Cook, died July 3. He'd been a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News for over half a century, and was famous as the "originator" of the phrase "the opera ain't over till the fat lady sings." And although it wasn't really original with him (apparently, it was actually a variation on an old Southern saying), he did help popularize it. So I guess we do have ol' Dan to thank or blame for that.

Just one more dead people note, and then I promise I'll stop all this morbidity (morbid-ness?). One of the books I read this week was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows [see my review]. It was an Early Reviewer book from LibraryThing, and I almost didn't request it because it had such a strange title. But I ended up really loving the book and was all set to start hoping for a sequel – the characters were just so fascinating. But after a little checking around on the internet, I discovered that the book's author, Mary Ann Shaffer, died last February. Her niece, Annie Barrows, is listed as co-author of the book, but I don't know how much she had to do with the actual writing. So I guess we probably won't be seeing any more of the quirky and endearing Guernsey Islanders in the future. Very sad.

Also finished this week, The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman. Haven't done a review of it yet, but I hope to get one up in a day or two. For now, I'll just say I liked the book a lot more than I expected to. The story jumps back and forth between modern day England and sixteenth-century Constantinople, and tells the tale of a young English woman who is shipwrecked and ends up as a slave in the Sultan's harem. Yes, I agree – the first words that popped into my head when I read the synopsis were "Harlequin Romance." But it really was much better than that. And no, the Sultan didn't look anything like Fabio.

Today, in addition to the obits, I've been reading So Long at the Fair, by Christina Schwarz. It was another free ARC – this one from Doubleday – but I believe the regular edition already went on sale earlier this month. The back of the book says it "explores the lure of new attraction and the pull of long-established love and the lengths people will go to in satisfying their deepest desires." Hmmmm. Well, I've only read about 50 pages, but so far it seems like a pretty standard marriage-on-the-rocks tale, and it's not really grabbing me. But I'll give it another 50 pages or so before making up my mind about abandoning it for the "lure of a new attraction."

Oh, yeah – I guess I should also confess I've been wasting way too much time today, playing with Unconscious Mutterings. It's a new meme I found a few weeks ago – well, it's new to me but obviously it's been around a while because they're on week number 286! You can see my attempts at answers on my other blog, or try it yourself by checking out LunaNina's website. But it's habit forming, so be careful.

Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Written by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Published by The Dial Press, 2008, 274 pages
This review refers to an uncorrected advance proof of the novel

When I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program, I had a few misgivings about starting it. For one thing, it has such a cutesy title. And it's an epistolary novel which made me dubious right away. Novels written in the form of letters are some of the hardest to pull off successfully – I know because I've tried it myself, with absolutely ghastly results.

But I needn't have worried. This is a wonderful little book. Some other reviewers have called it "perfect." I'm not sure I'd go that far – but if it's not perfect, it's a very near miss.

With just a few exceptions, the letters that tell the story are written by or to Miss Juliet Ashton, a young writer living in London, right after World War II. It's 1946 and England is struggling with the dreadful aftermath of the war – rationing is still in effect and the horror of the war is still fresh in everyone's memories.

Juliet is floundering a bit, looking for a subject for her next book and not having much luck. And then one day she receives a letter from one Dawsey Adams, a farmer living on the Channel Island of Guernsey. He has acquired a book that once belonged to Juliet – her name and address were written inside the front cover. The book is the Selected Essays of Elia, by Charles Lamb, and Mr. Adams has fallen in love with the book and its author. He asks Juliet if she could send him the name and address of a bookstore in London where he can order more of Lamb's books by mail. He also makes brief mention of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which he says came into being because of a roast pig the Islanders were trying to keep secret from the German soldiers who occupied the island during the war.

Her curiosity piqued, Juliet writes back to Dawsey Adams and their correspondence begins. Gradually, other members of the Island literary group join in and Juliet gets to know them all through their tales of the books and authors they've discovered. She learns about their daily lives in Guernsey, and also hears about the hardships and trauma they experienced during the war which brought the German army to their island. Juliet and the Islanders become more and more caught up in each other's lives, until they eventually invite her to visit them, and she quickly accepts the invitation. And her visit has a powerful, life-changing effect on both Juliet and her new friends.

This is one of those rare books that will have you laughing and crying at the same time. It's witty and warm and moving, with a few surprise twists thrown in along the way – a love story, and a celebration of literature and books and the people who read and write them. And it even has a description of the Potato Peel Pie of the title!

Oh, and Oscar Wilde makes an appearance, as well.

I read an uncorrected proof of the book. The regular edition is due to go on sale July 29, and this is definitely one I'll be buying.