Someday we'll have to play an all Newbery-winner round of bookerdash.

As far as I know, all of Dick Francis' books involve horse-racing (not surprising, as he's a former jockey himself). He's also a very good author; hence my choosing his books twice.

On to the competition:

1. A cliff is an odd thing to see. Even more so when a man is lying unconscious at the bottom of it.

2. Bobby Jones teed up his ball, gave a short preliminary waggle, took the club back slowly, then brought it down and through with the rapidity of lightning.

Did the ball fly down the fairway straight and true, rising as it went and soaring over the bunker to land within an easy mashie shot of the fourteenth green?

No, it did not. Badly topped, it scudded along the ground and embedded itself firmly in the bunker!

3. Friday. With a sigh of relief, I close the ledgers, pack my papers in to my briefcase, turn out the office lights and head for home. Time to rest up and get ready for work tomorrow.

4. I can't see anything, but the ground is moving below me, shifting and swaying- Wait. No. It didn't start here. It started in the stable.

5. In a typical year, about two weeks lay between the deadline for filing income taxes and the Kentucky Derby.

6. In the summer, the paths along the cliffs at Chepstow were thick with vacationers on day trips to Chepstow Castle and punting expeditions up the River Wye. But by November, the cold winds and fog drove off all but a few romantic or heartbroken locals out for long walks. It was into this desolate scene that Bobby Jones stepped one day in early December. Bobby was neither romantic nor heartbroken, merely seventeen and permanently bored.

7. The Vicar Jones sat at breakfast in his small but agreeable rectory in Llandudno. He had enjoyed his egg and his hot chocolate. Unusually, for he was a creature of habit and rarely varied his breakfast routine, he had asked his wife for a second cup of hot chocolate. While he was awaiting it, he glanced again at the morning's post which lay on his breakfast table.

8. Thursday, March 17th, I spent the morning in anxiety, the afternoon in ecstasy, and the evening unconscious.

9. Two days before the Cheltenham Gold Cup, my father unexpectedly dropped by my office.

"It's good to see you, Davy," he said, shaking my hand as I rose from my desk to meet him. His overcoat was damp and his palm was cold and clammy.

"You too, sir." My father had never been a convivial man, so at first it didn't seem strange that he would not meet my eyes.

10. "Why didn't they ask Evans?"

Crap, this is the toughest round yet. Not only can I not confidently identify the correct entries, I'm not having much luck with my usual trick of distinguishing my competitors. Maybe it's my imagination, but I think this game has sharpened up people's writing skills.

I agree! You guys are getting way too good at this.

It's a good thing I got all those points last round because I'm probably getting skunked this round.

...and the results are in!

This round is a dead heat for three of the players...

1. A cliff is an odd thing to see. Even more so when a man is lying unconscious at the bottom of it. - Stan Cold

2. Bobby Jones teed up his ball, gave a short preliminary waggle, took the club back slowly, then brought it down and through with the rapidity of lightning.

Did the ball fly down the fairway straight and true, rising as it went and soaring over the bunker to land within an easy mashie shot of the fourteenth green?

No, it did not. Badly topped, it scudded along the ground and embedded itself firmly in the bunker! - Why Didn't They Ask Evans, Agatha Christie - correctly guessed by Kitoba

3. Friday. With a sigh of relief, I close the ledgers, pack my papers in to my briefcase, turn out the office lights and head for home. Time to rest up and get ready for work tomorrow. - Kitoba

4. I can't see anything, but the ground is moving below me, shifting and swaying- Wait. No. It didn't start here. It started in the stable. - Stan Cold - guessed by Llefser

5. In a typical year, about two weeks lay between the deadline for filing income taxes and the Kentucky Derby. - Llefser

6. In the summer, the paths along the cliffs at Chepstow were thick with vacationers on day trips to Chepstow Castle and punting expeditions up the River Wye. But by November, the cold winds and fog drove off all but a few romantic or heartbroken locals out for long walks. It was into this desolate scene that Bobby Jones stepped one day in early December. Bobby was neither romantic nor heartbroken, merely seventeen and permanently bored. - Inspiration - guessed by Llefser

7. The Vicar Jones sat at breakfast in his small but agreeable rectory in Llandudno. He had enjoyed his egg and his hot chocolate. Unusually, for he was a creature of habit and rarely varied his breakfast routine, he had asked his wife for a second cup of hot chocolate. While he was awaiting it, he glanced again at the morning's post which lay on his breakfast table. - Llefser - guessed by Inspiration and Stan Cold

8. Thursday, March 17th, I spent the morning in anxiety, the afternoon in ecstasy, and the evening unconscious. - Risk, Dick Francis - correctly guessed by Inspiration and Stan Cold

9. Two days before the Cheltenham Gold Cup, my father unexpectedly dropped by my office.

"It's good to see you, Davy," he said, shaking my hand as I rose from my desk to meet him. His overcoat was damp and his palm was cold and clammy.

"You too, sir." My father had never been a convivial man, so at first it didn't seem strange that he would not meet my eyes. - Inspiration - guessed by Kitoba

10. "Why didn't they ask Evans?" - Kitoba

Points for this round:

Kitoba: Two points for correctly identifying Agatha Christie's work, one point for managing to get more of the authors correct than anyone else. No-one guessed yours; a pity, really, since number 10 is actually a quote from the book (just before the end of chapter one); for a grand total of three.

Stan: Two points for correctly identifying the opening passage of Risk, and one point for fooling Llefser with your opening for the same book; for a grand total, once again, of three.

Llefser: No points for guessing the correct openings, as Stan and Inspiration have pulled the wool well over your eyes. However, you managed to fool both of them in return with your Vicar's breakfast, for two points; and, despite having got neither book correct, you nonetheless manage to just scrape up a single point for getting half the authors right (exactly half the authors right), for a grand total of... three, for the third time.

Inspiration: You guessed the same two openings as Stan; coincidence? Telepathy? Either way, it nets you the same two points as he got. Like Stan, you managed to get Llefser to guess one of your openings, for another point; but unlike Stan, you also managed to pull the wool over Kitoba's eyes, for yet another point. And, to top it all off, you correctly guessed enough authors to gain that point as well, for a grand total of five! (Which makes your total score after this round the same as Stan Cold's. Do you think that all these parallels mean anything, or am I seeing patterns in the random noise here?)

...and as for me, I got nothing; but had Kitoba changed his guess just slightly, I would have got three. I also notice that no-one except the author correctly guessed the author of number 10; Insp thought it was Stan and Stan thought it was Insp; every other quote had at least one person guess the correct author besides the correct author. Usually Kitoba, despite his protestations of difficulty in this task...

So. Totals.



Llefser, you're up next...

Holy cow, what a close round. Maybe the most interesting round of this game yet! Kudos to everybody.

While I had toyed with the idea of doing two Newbery winners this round, I am too convinced that everybody knows The Westing Game by heart to risk it. So instead, we will be trying to determine the openings to these two novels:

Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. Guiding us into the world of the grotesque, Dunn produces a novel of compassion, insight, and macabre humor. At its center are Al and Lil Binewski, carnival owners who breed freak offspring through drug use so that they can perform in the show. Over the years, this ghoulish process becomes the norm; indeed, as we share the experiences of the children, we find that for this close-knit family, a child's signs of normalcy are seen as a real threat.

The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño. This highly stylized novel is ostensibly about two poets, leaders of the Mexican visceral realist literary movement, and their search for an obscure icon of the movement and its repercussions. The book spans a decade and follows the poets from Mexico City to the Sonoran Desert, Guatemala, Barcelona, Paris, Israel, Congo, Liberia, and the U.S. The narrative becomes secondary to the voices of the people who meet these poets as this long novel is told through the personal stories--some humorous, some inscrutable, some tragic--of the eclectic assortment of characters they encounter on the way becomes less about the search and more about literature and language.


ETA: And I was so certain that "Llandudno" was going to be a giveaway....

"The sun sets in the west--everybody knows that--but Sunset Towers faced east."

Heh. Sorry. Big fan here.

"Strange!

Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment building stood on the shores of Lake Michigan, five stories high. Five empty stories high.

Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy made the rounds, dropping off letters at the doors of the chosen tenants to be. The letters were signed 'Barney Northrup.'

The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup."




Greatest. Newbery-winning. Opening. EVER! *

I read that book, but I can't memorize anything for the life of me.

It was for me --like a great big fat signature on the entry!


Well, it pretty much had to be a quote from that book somewhere. I figured it was too obvious for anyone to guess it --unless they psyched themselves out -- but I couldn't resist it.

This was a great round. I got the Agatha Christie by sheer elimination. Unfortunately, I thought I recognized the characteristic Llefser wit in "I spent the morning in anxiety, the afternoon in ecstasy, and the evening unconscious." That's a great beginning for a book by the way.



Ah Ellen Raskin. Figgs & Phantoms, anyone?

Wow, I should've caught that. I guess Ll- is the new fnord.

I actually listened to Geek Love on CD. I think I just might try and guess this one. [aside]Good god that book was bizarre[/aside]

Also, Sunset Towers makes me think of a book that I was read while in Elementary School and I have to ask. Does it end with a younger girl winning the "prize" by playing the stock market? If not, anyone have any idea which book I'm talking about, because I couldn't tell you what it's called. It's very similar to what was described there with a bunch of people invited to a competition, possibly a couple murders, some woman writing POLISH short hand notes and that's about all I've got.

Yep, that's "The Westing Game"!

I haven't read it... so I'm glad you didn't choose it, because I'm two points behind Inspiration already! I need to catch up!