Ladies, start your engines...

[chaletian]

You know this meme: guess the book from a random line!

1. He was by no means deficient in courage, but he had not the smallest wish, whatever Damerel’s offences might be, to find himself confronting his lordship early one morning with a pistol in one hand and twenty yards of cold earth between them. Venetia, Georgette Heyer, guessed by morganmuffle

2. The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth. Coming Up For Air, George Orwell, guessed by helenmia

3. “There’s steps I come down looking down as if it was fairyland and I saw how still it is how still and look at the tree Mrs Craven fell out of and I remember…” The Painted Garden, Noel Streatfeild, guessed by slemslempike

4. Tous les copains étaient déjà là et la maîtresse était en train de gronder Geoffroy qui était venu habillé en martien.

5. “I still say he’s a sonuvabitch. He’s a conceited sonuvabitch.” Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger, guessed by helenmia

6. “I am ashamed to say that there are still members of this great staff unknown to me except by sight. Which, of all the merry faces I see flitting about the passages, is the youthful Mr Binns?” Murder Must Advertise, DLS, guessed by slemslempike

7. Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns.” Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons, guessed by katie__pillar

8. Spend exhausting day in Plymouth chasing mythical housemaids. Diary of a Provincial Lady, RM Delafield, guessed by slemslempike and helenprev

9. “My infancy. When I was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with a shilling an hour by my nurse to keep an eye on me, and see that I did not raise Cain.”

10. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s father had died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot – say Saint Paul’s churchyard, for example – literally to astonish his son’s weak mind. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, guessed by morganmuffle

Comments

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

1. Heyer, but I don't know which one.

3. Secret Garden

6. Is it Murder Must Advertise?

8. And this seems like Wimsey as well. I don't know which.

And they are all very frustrating because I think I've read at least half of them but just don't know what they are.

[chaletian.livejournal.com]

1. is indeed Heyer.

6. is right too.

And mwa ha ha at the others *g*

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh oh! Painted Garden!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh, um, Provincial Lady? Or are you really only meant to guess if you properly know?

[chaletian.livejournal.com]

Exactamundo.

[helenprev.livejournal.com]

I thought 8 was Provincial Lady as well.

And I am convinced I have read number 9 recently, but can't place it at all!

[katie__pillar.livejournal.com]

Me too, Helen. And in fact, Liss has outright told me that I've read it in the not too distant past and I STILL can't get it. Most frustrating.

[morganmuffle]

1. Venetia by Georgette Heyer

10. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The rest I'm lost on *g*

[balooky.livejournal.com]

2 is Coming up for Air and I know 5 too I think, is it Catcher in the Rye.

[cyphomandra.livejournal.com]

Am wandering through friends/friends lists, and just had to ask you to put me out of my misery - I know I've read 9, I know the next line is something like "At the end of the week she struck for two shillings - and got it,", and yet I have no idea where it's from. Is it a boy's school story?

[chaletian.livejournal.com]

It is a boy's school story, yes, and that's the next line. I cannot reveal the title yet, for that would ruin the beauty of the game. But check back in a day or so and I will have posted a second line from it... *g*