THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: rive gauche on 22 Nov 2005, 08:56
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Pick a book that you are reading, and find a passage from it. Transcribe the passage. The next person has to guess what book the passage is from before they can put their own passage. Passages can be as obscure or as recognisable as you like. Have fun!
Example:
He is in shirtsleeves, with purple suspenders; he has rolled the sleeves of his shirt above the elbows. The suspenders can hardly be seen against the blue shirt, they are all obliterated, buried in the blue, but it is false humility; in fact, they will not let themselves be forgotten, they annoy me by their sheep-like stubbornness, as if, starting to become purple, they stopped somewhere along the way without giving up their pretentions.
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Eh, I don't think so. The movie quote game is hard enough, and now you want to do it for literature? I doubt you'd find one person in ten-thousand who could identify that quote you just cited — and if someone did, it would only get more obscure (and difficult) from there.
Take, for example, this quote. It's from a very famous author, but I doubt if anyone here could identify the source. And how can anyone play if they can't keep the game going?
To find out who said it, e-mail me at leezion2 (at) yahoo.com
"You don't care for Ghosts, then," I ventured to suggest, unless they are really terrifying?"
"Quite so," the lady assented. "The regular Railway-Ghosts — I mean the Ghosts of ordinary Railway-literature — are very poor affairs. I feel inclined to say, with Alexander Selkirk, 'Their tameness is shocking to me'! And they never do any Midnight Murders. They couldn't 'welter in gore,' to save their lives!"
"'Weltering in gore' is a very expressive phrase, certainly. Can it be done in any fluid, I wonder?"
"I think not," the lady readily replied — quite as if she had thought it out, long ago. "It has to be something thick. For instance, you might welter in bread-sauce. That, being white, would be more suitable for a Ghost, supposing it wished to welter!"
"You have a real good terrifying Ghost in that book?" I hinted.
"How could you guess?" she exclaimed with the most engaging frankness, and placed the volume in my hands. I opened it eagerly, (with a not unpleasant thrill like what a good ghost-story gives one) at the 'uncanny' coincidence of my having so unexpectedly divined the subject of her studies.
It was a book of Domestic Cookery, open at the article Bread Sauce.'
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Well, you don't need to be rude about it. I guess I'll just have to go read my copy of Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno, then. Sigh.
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I think we should try things more like:
Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.
As easy as that one was, I shall supply equally easy, should you possess a mind for marginally lesser known works by the authors of the classics.
'Fondling,' she saith, 'since I have hemm'd thee here
Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.
Within this limit is relief enough,
Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain,
Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,
To shelter thee from tempest and from rain
Then be my deer, since I am such a park;
No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.'
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Well, you don't need to be rude about it.
I fail to see how he was rude.
And iKitten, I'm going to guess that that's one of Shakespeare's poems? Not sure though.
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Keep going.
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Naw, 11 syllables per line, 12 lines, ABABCCDEDEFF rhyme structure, so I wouldn't say it's a Shakespeare sonnet, seeing as the trend there was 10 syllables per line, 14 lines and ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyming structure.
[/GCSE English'd]
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Shakespeare didn't just write sonnets. Unless I'm horrifically mistake, it's from Venus and Adonis, by old Bill.
Now, a guessing poetry thread? That would be more like it.
"From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone."
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Alone by Edgar Allan Poe. Yup, they even teach that at German schools.
And now for another classic (character names omitted as they would give it away)
Character1: My fair young lady, may I make so free
As to lend you my arm and company?
Character2: I'm not a lady, am not fair;
I can go home without your care.
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They taught you Alone at school!? Awesome. We only got war poetry, and I have no love for the war poets, except for Owen.
I know your quote, btw, but I'll wait a bit so as not to monopolise the thread.
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We had almost no war poetry, neither in English class nor in German class. The only poetry I can remember from English class was stuff by Shakespeare, Alone and Ozymandias. There was more, but I'm forgetful.
In German class, war poetry would have been a touchy subject anyway, given our country's history. Plus we have an abundance of really great writers who did not write about war anyway.
Also, I think you can guess it now.
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Oh man, I knew I should have done English Lit. We didn't even touch poetry in english.