Kat’s Film and Book Reviews

Last time, this was our book quote:

When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead,

the table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.

We didn’t have any takers, but the quote was from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis.

Here’s our new one:

[He] crossed to his bedroom on tiptoe, slipped inside, closed the door, and turned to collapse on his bed.  The trouble was, there was already someone sitting on it.

Let me know in the comments if you think you know it!

Last time, this was our book quotation:

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined.

She was the kind of person who keeps a parrot.

Nobody guessed it–not even my dad–so I’ll just tell you.  It’s written by Mark Twain, from his book, Following the Equator, 1897.

Mark Twain, Image courtesy of Berkeley University

Okay, here’s the new quotation to guess:

When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.

Okay, last time we had a longish quotation, then we had several hints, but nobody got the book quotation.  Here’s what it was:

Along the road there came a stranger in a land where strangers were rare and suspect.  He walked up to the door of a crumbling farmhouse and hammered.  After a long moment, a light blinked on somewhere in the house and a young woman appeared, drawing a cheap mail-order bathrobe tightly about her.  She opened the door a crack and her sleep-swollen face winced with fear as she stared at the apparition on her doorstep.  He was over six feet tall and dressed entirely in black.  He wore a black suit, black tie, a black hat, and black overcoat, with impractical black dress shoes covered with mud.  His face, barely visible in the darkness, sported a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee.  The flashes of lightning behind him added an eerie effect.

“May I use your phone?” he asked.

The clues were:

• was originally written in the 70’s
• is non-fiction
• had a  movie based in it a few years ago.

The answer is…The Mothman Prophecies, by John Keel.  And I have to say, I think my friends in West Virginia could have gotten that if they’d thought about it.

Anyway, here’s another one for next week.  This one includes a special shout-out to my dad, since I got the quotation from a book I borrowed from him.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person who keeps a parrot.

Image courtesy of the UFOCasebook

If you don’t remember the book quotation from last time, here it is:

Along the road there came a stranger in a land where strangers were rare and suspect.  He walked up to the door of a crumbling farmhouse and hammered.  After a long moment, a light blinked on somewhere in the house and a young woman appeared, drawing a cheap mail-order bathrobe tightly about her.  She opened the door a crack and her sleep-swollen face winced with fear as she stared at the apparition on her doorstep.  He was over six feet tall and dressed entirely in black.  He wore a black suit, black tie, a black hat, and black overcoat, with impractical black dress shoes covered with mud.  His face, barely visible in the darkness, sported a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee.  The flashes of lightning behind him added an eerie effect.

“May I use your phone?” he asked.

I want to give you a couple of hints before we give up on it entirely.  This book:

• was originally written in the 70’s
• is non-fiction
• had a  movie based in it a few years ago.

Does that help?

Congrats to Mom, who got last week’s book quote!  It was indeed from Mystic River by Dennis Lehane.

Image courtesy of thecia.com

Ready for the next one?  Here we go:

Along the road there came a stranger in a land where strangers were rare and suspect.  He walked up to the door of a crumbling farmhouse and hammered.  After a long moment, a light blinked on somewhere in the house and a young woman appeared, drawing a cheap mail-order bathrobe tightly about her.  She opened the door a crack and her sleep-swollen face winced with fear as she stared at the apparition on her doorstep.  He was over six feet tall and dressed entirely in black.  He wore a black suit, black tie, a black hat, and black overcoat, with impractical black dress shoes covered with mud.  His face, barely visible in the darkness, sported a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee.  The flashes of lightning behind him added an eerie effect.

“May I use your phone?” he asked.

I think this is one of the best book beginnings I’ve ever read.

When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at the Coleman Candy plant and carried the stench of warm chocolate back home with them. It became a permanent character of their clothes, the beds they slept in, the vinyl backs of their car seats. Sean’s kitchen smelled like a Fudgsicle, his bathroom like a Coleman Chew-Chew bar. By the time they were eleven, Sean and Jimmy had developed a hatred of sweets so total that they took their coffee black for the rest of their lives and never ate dessert.

It’s a well-known fiction book by a prolific author. It was also made into a movie. Anyone know?