Page 117

Aha! Yes, I did read that one. I do recommend it for historical novel fans.

My page 117:

and a hog is me and you can calculate, but there ain't any difference between him and one."

Rayber appeared to be gritting his teeth. Finally he said, "Just forget Bishop exists. You haven't been asked to have anything to do with him. He's just a mistake of nature. Try not to even be aware of him."

"He ain't my mistake," the boy muttered. "I ain't having a thing to do with him."

"Forget him," Rayber said in a short, harsh voice.

The boy looked at him oddly as if he were beginning to perceive his secret affliction. What he saw or thought he saw seemed grimly to amuse him. "Let's leave out of here," he said, "and get to walking again."

"We are not going to walk tonight," Rayber said. "We are going home and go to bed." He said it with a firmness and finality he had not used before. The boy had only shrugged.

As Rayber lay watching the window darken, he felt that all his nerves were stretched through him like high tension wire. He began trying to relax one muscle at a time as the books recommended, beginning with those in the back of his neck. He emptied his mind of everything but the just visible pattern of the hedge against the screen. Still he was alert for any sound. Long after he lay in complete darkness, he was still alert, unrelaxed, ready to spring up at the least creak of a floor board in the hall. All at once he sat up, wide awake. A door opened and closed. He leapt up and ran across the hall into the opposite

edited 4th May '14 2:47:14 PM by ColonelCathcart

Seems kinda short. Also not my kinda genre. *simple tastes*

For making lines without paragraph spaces,
end the first paragraph of the two with double backslashes.

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When making larger gaps than one row, I like to make a gap of three then put [[white:.]] on the middle of the three.

edited 3rd May '14 8:03:13 PM by Sabbo

The last one is probably one I would enjoy, but honestly my to-read list is so lengthy that anything posted here would have to blow me away to get me to read it.

This current one is hard for me to place. There are so many things that could be happening. I can't even give a guess on whether it's a type of genre fiction or not. Why is Rayber so tense? What is his secret affliction? What is wrong with Bishop and who/what is he? Why do Rayber and the boy go walking? No clue.

edited 3rd May '14 8:23:15 PM by Rhea

Add me to the "no idea what's going on" pile.

The book seems to be American, set in American west or south, pre 1950. I'm not sure if the author is male or female.

I'm not sure who the protagonist is here. We get Rayber's point of view, but I think the boy may be a more important character.

My guess is that Rayber's "secret afflication" is the same thing(or similar) that makes Bishop "a mistake of nature". Maybe they are both gay? Whatever it is I reckon it's something that would be condemned by the society potrayed, but more accepted by the intended readership. Not necessarily fully accepted though.   I'm quite interested in the start of the first sentence, I can't figure out it's meaning at all. 

The prose isn't paticularly enticing. I'd probably skim through to get a better understanding of what's being alluded to, but at this point I wouldn't  read the whole book.       

The book was The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O Connor. Bishop has Down's Syndrome, and Rayber is his father, who is ashamed of him. The boy lived with his grandfather, who told him that he would baptize Bishop and become a prophet, which both he and Rayber are opposed to.

Don't die game!

"eighty-four days at sea. They nearly sold it to you too.

I must not think nonsense, he thought. Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her? I would take some though in any form and pay what they asked. I wish I could see the glow from the lights, he thought. I wish too many things. But that is the thing I wish for now. He tried to settle more comfortably to steer and from his pain he knew he was not dead.

He saw the reflected glare of the lights of the city at what must have been around ten o'clock at night. They were only perceptible at first as the light is in the sky before the moon rises. Then they were steady to see across the ocean which was rough now with the increasing breeze. He steered inside of the glow and he though that now, soon, he must hit the edge of the stream.

Now it is over, he thought. They will probably hit me again. But what can a man do against them in the dark without a weapon?

He was stiff and sore now and his wounds and all the strained parts of his body hurt with the cold of the night. I hope I do not have to fight again, he though. I hope so much I do not have to fight again."

The city is on a waterfront, it's night, and our protagonist doesn't like violence. Pretty much impossible to tell much about the setting or genre from this fragment. I might flip back a couple of pages to see what's going on.

I have the feeling of an older book, probably somewhere in the Age of Sails. The 84 days and them "selling it" to him makes it sound like he volunteered for this voyage. Wherever he was was far enough away that he couldn't see land for a good bit of it. I'm thinking that he was a volunteer for a military voyage based on the prospect of violence on the other side.

I'd probably read further.

That was The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, famous for boring high school students out of their minds (and winning a Pulitzer, and getting Hemingway the Nobel).

I've read The Old Man and the Sea several times, but I don't think I would have recognized it.

Never heard of it, or him. (EDIT: Actually, scratch that; the name is vaguely familiar. The book is not.)

My turn next. It may take a little bit for me to write it up though.

edited 7th May '14 1:32:12 AM by Sabbo

'But, Dumby, according to you all the Nungas are your cousins.'

'That's right.'

'Christ, Dumby, I'll never understand you blackfellas.'

'And I'll never understand you whitefellas.'

We both laughed.

'Is that your old man over there?' said Dumby.

It was him all right. It was the first time I'd seen him that day. He was standing next to the keg with Mick and a couple of other front-bar regulars. He had a plastic cup of beer in each hand. He was laughing. Free piss always made him happy.

'Yeah, that's him,' I said.

'Wanna go over and see him?'

'Nuh, let's go. I'm still hungry.'

'Get yourself some tucker,' said Dumby as we walked back inside. 'I'll be over there.'

He pointed to a table where a group of girls was sitting, including a couple of my siblings. They started whispering and giggling when they saw Dumby coming.

At the back of the Institute were five or six trestle tables. They were loaded with food I'd never seen so much. I took a plastic plate and started piling it on - a piece of cold chook, some tuna mornay, a sausage roll, some potato salad, half a mini-pizza.

The plate started to sag in the middle.

'Sure you got enough?'

It was Clarence, Dumby's sister. She was wearing a

Really obviously Australia, with Dumby and Clarence being Aboriginal (is that the correct term anymore?) Our narrator is probably dirt poor, and his or her (probably his) father is a drunk. I'm guessing a YA book, set in more modern times. I might read it just for the setting.

I wouldn't have guessed Australia, but I believe it. I'm extremely unfamiliar with all things Australian.

The narrator must have a very large family to say "a couple of my siblings," and I have no idea what "the Institute" could be. His (?) meeting with Clarence reads like a romantic interest being introduced, but page 117 is a bit late for that to be the main plot.

edited 7th May '14 4:19:50 PM by Rhea

That is very Australian. Wonder if Dumby is a ladies man?

Good call, SKJAM. The book is Deadly Unna? by Phillip Gwynne, a book I had to read in English class in year 9 or 10 or something. The assumption of it being about Australian aboriginals in modern times was absolutely spot-on.

Rhea, I don't remember what "the Institute" was, although I think Clarence was indeed a love interest subplot. I have no interest in reading the book again to find out how that went. :P

And majoraoftime, I don't remember whether he is, but he at least thinks he is.

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...Man, it was hard thinking of a book I'd be confident nobody else here would have read. :P When I compare it to any form of adult literature I've read, it's clear to me now how different it really was.

edited 8th May '14 12:29:12 AM by Sabbo

Oh, I saw that in my high school library all the time. Never read it though.

... to be honest, based on the page I don't know if I would read it now.

Is there an order you guys are going in, or what? I've been lurking.

I don't think there's any posting order.

Does anyone mind if I post a page next?

Kit answered with an open-beaked gurgle of laughter. “Perfectly well. I rather like making people afraid of me.”

“It’s a bit more than that,” Blade said anxiously.

He would have said more, but this was the point where Pretty disappeared completely, and they never got back to the subject again.

They had had to bring Pretty. Beauty, when she discovered that they would be away for weeks, had refused to let Shona or anyone else ride her unless Pretty came too. Since Pretty could now flutter into the air quite well, whirling his dizzying black and white wings – which grew stronger every day – and he could graze and eat oats in a messy inexpert way, nobody thought he needed his mother that much and they had wanted to leave him with Old George. But Beauty insisted Pretty needed her. Pretty himself was sure he needed nothing. He was having a wonderful time frisking from side to side of the procession, teasing the dogs, chasing cows and, every so often, alarming Beauty thoroughly by just disappearing. Every time Beauty lost sight of him, she was convinced the soldiers had killed Pretty too. Since the one piece of good sense Pretty ever showed was in never going near the soldiers, nobody took Beauty’s panics very seriously, but they always caused a long delay.

This time when Pretty vanished while Blade was trying to warn Kit, he really was nowhere to be seen. Beauty soared into the air with Shona on her back. “Sohldiers! Bhad sohldiers goht Prhetthy!”

“No, they haven’t!” Shona said, exasperated. The reins holding the sheep were cutting her fingers, she had lost a stirrup and she had nearly fallen off. “You know he never goes near them. Go down!”

“Fhind Prhetthy!” Beauty trumpeted, circling higher and stretching the reins almost to snapping point.

“Oh really!” Shona was leaning off to one side hanging on to the twenty feet of thread and scrabbling for her iron. “It’s lucky I’m a good rider, Beauty, or you’d have lost me by now. Do go down.”

But Beauty tried to go up again, neighing for Pretty, rearing in mid-air in her anxiety. Shona looked so likely to come off that Don took to the air with a clap in order to catch her, and

edited 8th May '14 4:02:17 AM by LoniJay

So Shona's a human (I assume) and the rest are talking horses? I think some old versions of My Little Pony were like that, although whether or not any names line up would be beyond me.

As for whether I'd read it, no I wouldn't. Then again, having one random page justify talking animals is incredibly rare. :P

^_^ This is one that I recognize, having read the book a year or two ago, so I'm out of this one, but definitely a very good book!

I've read this one too, at least a dozen times.

Ah, I haven't spoken to that many people who've read it, so I thought fewer people here would have =P

It's The Dark Lord of Derkholm, an affectionately humorous take on the standard fantasy setting by Diana Wynne Jones. It's a very good book indeed.

It's about a wizard who makes fantastical animals with a combination of genetic engineering and magic. Shona and Blade are humans; Don and Kit are griffins (and also Blade and Shona's siblings), and Pretty and Beauty are indeed talking, flying horses. The wizard is appointed to play the role of your stereotypical Dark Lord for a yearly theme-park-like version of the standard fantasy story.

Dark Lord of Derkholm is the trope page. There's also a sequel and her The Tough Guide to Fantasyland which she published before deciding to actually set a story in such a world.