Allusions

I guess this is sort of the game in reverse: you list the titles, we guess the theme (which needn't have anything to do with what the books are actually about — just what is suggested by the set of titles).

#1:

The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey
Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
Myth: a Very Short Introduction by Robert Alan Segal
Peter Pan: A Fantasy in Five Acts by Sir James Barrie

#2:

The Alabaster Hand by A. N. L. Munby
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart
Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

1) Size and 2) Weddings (proposals)?

Warning: If you get this one, you may date yourself. :-)

American Sign Language Concise Dictionary Martin L. A. Sternberg
Main-Travelled Roads Hamlin Garland
Murder Must Advertise Dorothy L. Sayers
The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie
The Sardonic Humor of Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Bierce

3) would have to be The verse by the side of the road : the story of the Burma-Shave signs and jingles

#4

Spot on!!

If no one else will do another. . . . :-)

I did have the book cited by Larxol in mind for the last one. That worked well, so here's another to which the answer is a book title --- in this case a novel.

The Flood from Heaven Eberhard Zangger
The Church of Dead Girls Stephen Dobyns
Stroke of Death Josephine Bell
The Five Bells and Bladebone Martha Grimes
The Tailor of Panama John Le Carre

#6:myshelves:

Is it The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers?

hazelk,

Yup! Your turn. :-)

The answer isn't going to be a book, just a general topic.

In Between The Sheets, and Other Stories by Ian McEwan
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour--an introduction by J.D. Salinger
The Golden Keel by Desmond Bagley
The Big Boom by Dominic Stansberry
Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

Sailing ships?

This is probably too easy, but how about one for our American members?

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The reverse of the medal by Patrick O'Brian
Memoirs of many in one by Patrick White
Two serious ladies by Jane Bowles
To Speak is Never Neutral by Luce Irigaray

Replying to >8 myshelves:(myshelves):

What's the link?

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
Just William by Richmal Crompton

#11

William Wordsworth?

Edited to add: Wandering lonely as a cloud, from Dove cottage?

#10

Wow . . . I'm feeling really stupid. Will I lose my citizenship? Or my driver's license?

The latter, definitely :-)

I'm not a driver myself, and it occurs to me that the one I missed out must be fairly vital. Number 6 in the list should have been

203 ways to drive a man wild in bed by Olivia St.Claire

thorold,

I'm still lost. What do the 3rd and 4th books listed have to do with it? Hmmm. One and two for gears?? Maybe, if you don't drive. But it's "first" and "second."

And why Americans? At first I thought it was for the 4th of July, with "many in one" meaning "e pluribus unum." :-)

It's definitely gears. I call them first and second, but I've heard them called one and two.

I was thinking of the automatic transmission lever that says "PRND12" (not necessarily in that order).

American because I was always brought up to believe that automatic transmissions were a peculiarly American thing, which is probably not true any more. And you're probably right that it would be more natural to read 1 and 2 as "first" and "second", in which case it doesn't make much sense.

I think this game probably works best doing it as in your Nos. 3 & 6, or Hazelk's no.11, where the answer is a specific book title or author. Hmmm. Lets see if I can work something clearer out...

>12 myshelves::myshelves: well done! The Daffodils by Wordsworth.

Don't let my posting stop you from yours when you think of it, thorold. :)

This is probably too easy. Mine isn't a book, just a general topic again.

The Pot of Gold and Other Plays by Plautus
Boiling a Frog by Christopher Brookmyre
Leaves of Grass, and Selected Prose by Walt Whitman
The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks
Cup of Gold : a life of Sir Henry Morgan, buccaneer, with occasional references to history by John Steinbeck

#19

Tea?

#16,

I've never heard that. People talk about shifting into one, two, reverse, ...?

#17,

I see. I'm an old American. :-) Grew up with manual shift. I hate having the car decide when to shift. I decide when to shift, or to downshift in some conditions. :-)

Another classic mystery novel:

The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
Nine Princes in Amber Roger Zelazny
Was It Murder? James Hilton
Tower of Glass Robert Silverberg
Homer's Daughter Robert Graves

myshelves:

yes, tea :)

re #21: I say that I shift into first, second, drive, neutral, park, or reverse. But some people say that they shift to one or shift to two, etc. (Or maybe it's just the people I associate with?)

OK, here goes: A classic novel this time. Should be straightforward, I hope...

Foetal attraction by Kathy Lette
Pip by Freya North
Late for the wedding by Jayne Ann Krentz
Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes

Been decades since I read it, but Pip says Great Expectations to me.

Yes :-)

>22 myshelves::it's bugging me, myshelves, a little clue?

22:it's bugging me, myshelves, a little clue?

Sure.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Napoleon and Josephine : The Biography of Marriage Francer Mossiker

Doh! It's been bugging me, too, but the penny finally dropped - it's The Daughter of Time, isn't it?

You got it, thorold!

Next?

For my next trick, I'll require un spot de l'encre et une pièce de papier...

Monty, his part in my victory by Spike Milligan
The Atlantic crossing by Melvin Maddocks
The poetical works of Mrs. Hemans by Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans
Goodbye, Mickey Mouse by Len Deighton
Selected poems by Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

The Luck of the Bodkins by P.G. Wodehouse

I'll need time to think of one, so if anyone has another set, feel free to go ahead of me.

Ok. :-)

Jamaica Inn Daphne du Maurier
Knight of Shadows Roger Zelazny
The Ritual Bath Faye Kellerman
Daisy Miller Henry James
Monk's Hood Ellis Peters

#31& 32,

So I don't have to find and re-read the book *smile*, would you mind running down which words are the clues? Monty & Mickey Mouse I remember, and they were on a ship. But the other 2? Is the author name the clue for Tennyson? And the other one?

Anyone want another clue for 33?

>34 myshelves: No, you should go and re-read the book. Everyone should read The Luck of the Bodkins at least once a year :-)

The joke is that there is a character named Ambrose Tennyson, who has been hired by movie mogul Ivor Llewellyn (a Sam Goldwyn lookalike) to write for him in Hollywood. Halfway across the Atlantic, Llewellyn discovers that Ambrose is an avant-garde novelist and not, as he had assumed, "the Tennyson who wrote 'The boy stood on the burning deck'".

>Anyone want another clue for 33?

I'm stuck, but christiguc has a library full of Ellis Peters, so better give her another chance first.

Is 'Enry significant, or a typo? I know there's a whole literature about gaps and silences in Henry James...

I thought there was a character named Tennyson. But I would never have solved it. I probably am due for a re-read. Thanks.

'enry was just my keyboard set for cockney. :-) I fixed it.

The authors don't matter. Pull a word from each title.

Edited to add: Oh, and the answer is a "work" by an author for whom there is no clue given.

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer?

The pilgrims all gathered at the inn. Among the stories were The Knight's Tale, The Wife of Bath's Tale, The Miller's Tale, and The Monk's Tale?

christiguc,

Right! I thought using anything with "tale" or "pilgrim" would be too big a giveaway.

I don't seem to have much luck solving these, but I'll try posting one! This is a classic novel.

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
Sins of the Fathers by Susan Howatch
A Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
Young Men and Fire by Norman MacLean
A Blind man Can See How Much I Love You : stories by Amy Bloom

I'm having a hard time coming up with one that I don't think is completely obvious. So I'll just tell myself that it's because I already know the answer that I think it's too easy. :)

Theodicy : essays on the goodness of God, the freedom of man, and the origin of evil by Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von Leibniz
Banished to the Ribbons of Concrete by Jack Vink
Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner
Eldorado : A Story of the Scarlett Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

It is a book.

Aviddiva,

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte?

#41

Jane Eyre?

#44

Sorry. I forgot to refresh before posting, so didn't see that you'd already answered.

Jane Eyre it is!

christiguc,

Did you touchstone the author names because they count, or is it just the titles we look at?

You can probably get it without the authors, but one of them will give you an extra hint.

Candide!

That was a good one! Keep 'em coming.

Btw, where did drbubbles go? Never even confirmed the first answers.

This one might need a bit of lateral thinking, but it should give you a series of books:

The bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott
Broadway Stories by Damon Runyon
Servants of the map : stories by Andrea Barrett
Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, A Biography by Fred Kaplan
The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger

Edit: Author touchstones removed for myshelves

We started off with only the titles counting.
Please folks, don't touchstone any authors unless they also count.

I'm having no luck with lateral thinking. Or maybe I haven't read the series.

Anyone else want a hint? Genre, or Children's/Adult, or British/American/other or something?

yes--I think I need a hint too. Either something that gives us an idea about what type of book or another clue in the form title and author.

It's just not clicking yet. :)

Are these the Mapp and Lucia novels by E. F. Benson? I haven't read them, but I did watch some of the BBC series ages ago.

I've never read (or seen) them, but with Mapp & Lucia, it sure sounds good. On the assumption that it is solved, I'm going to throw in one I have ready, and that I think is easy. Had to cheat & go outside my catalog a bit, but. . . .

Profane friendship by Harold Brodkey
Fourth Mansions by Raphael Aloysius Lafferty
Highways and Byways in Oxford and the Cotswolds by Herbert A. Evans
Love in the ruins : the adventures of a bad Catholic at a time near the end of the world by Walker Percy
Traveler's Key To Ancient Greece: A Guide to the Sacred Places of Ancient Greece by Richard G. Geldard

>56 aviddiva:,57 - yes, Mapp and Lucia. Well done for working it out if you haven't read them!

>57 myshelves: Brideshead revisited: the sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder -- having spotted Aloysius, Oxford and Catholic rather jump out, don't they?

I'll do an other one tomorrow.

thorold,

Told you it was easy. :-)

I thought some of them might be well enough hidden in long titles to give a moment's pause. Would it have made any difference if I'd just put R. A. Lafferty, which is the touchstone?

Yes, it would have been harder without Aloysius, but Brideshead is one of those books I practically know by heart, so I would probably still have got it, sooner or later.

...oh, all right then, another easy one to be going on with. This one's a novel.

Elegy written in a country church yard by Thomas Gray
The good shepherd by C.S. Forester
Bathsheba by Torgny Lindgren
Late for the wedding by Jayne Ann Krentz
The fall of Troy by Smyrnaeus Quintus

Far from the Madding Crowd

There's a Mapp and Lucia series?

(I mean TV series--I know the book series)

Drat. Can't step away from the computer for a while w/o missing one.

Another easy one?

Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson
Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope
The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True Story of the Spanish Armada Neil Hanson
A Horse's Tale Mark Twain
A Kiss of Fire Masako Togawa

There was a series called Mapp and Lucia made for British TV in the 80's. It shows up here (California) on PBS sometimes. I don't remember much about it except Prunella Scales was in it.

myshelves,

Easy? Well, I know when to admit defeat (or atleast a need for another clue). Does anyone else agree?

How about?

Chariots of the Gods Erich von Daniken
Helen Keller Margaret Davidson

Btw, the answer isn't a specific book, but a well-known story.

How about someone posting another puzzle? No need to wait until that one is solved.

Okay--I'm a little slow today. Don't tell me the answer, but there's no reason why you should have to wait on me. :)

Here's one for you and any others who are still playing.

Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
The Illuminated Page : Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library by Janet Backhouse
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind : The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old by Deepak Chopra
The Sibyl in Her Grave by Sarah Caudwell
A rebours by J. K. Huysmans

(I had to borrow outside my library to do this one justice and make it possible to guess)

Dimensions by Robert Blevins
Extreme Ironing by Phil Shaw
It by Stephen King
Which Witch? by Eva Ibbotson
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

myshelves,

I keep thinking of the Trojan War (and your second group of clues reinforces that), but I don't understand Barchester Towers. Maybe I'm on the wrong path or maybe I should go brush up on my Trojan War knowledge?

aviddiva,

A Wrinkle in Time! I'd (almost) completely forgotten about those books. They were fun. :)

Good job, Christiguc! I think mine are too easy! Aren't the Walls of Troy referred to as the Towers of Illium or something similar?

I'm not sure I've got all the references, but is #68 The Picture of Dorian Gray?

yes!

aviddiva,

Yes! Which clues were confusing?

Trojan War. Right you are.
Launched a thousand ships (armada), and burnt "the topless towers of Illium."

I always get back too late!

Was Sybil the girlfriend he "done wrong" in Picture of DG? (Of all the things I've lost, I miss my memory the most.)

Here's a new one. I had to go out of my library again. (I guess that means I need to buy more books?)

Rugby Skills, Tactics and Rules by Tony Williams
The Collected Stories of Noel Coward by Noel Coward
The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir
Days Far Away: Memories of Charles Paget Wade edited by Michael Jessup
John Brown, abolitionist : the man who killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded civil rights by David S. Reynolds

myshelves,

Yes, Sibyl was the girl. You remember just fine. :)

Flashman!

Er... With John Brown, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord.

#79,

But I didn't remember when I saw the clue; only rang a bell when I knew the answer.

You got it!!

I guess my clues are too easy. Your turn!

Only too easy if you are dealing with a devout Flashman fan.

Btw, see your comments for an invitation to join the Flashman & Fraser Group. :-)

My brain is tired. :-) This one is a book.

Ashworth Hall Anne Perry
Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
Still River Hal Clement
The Kenneth Roberts Reader Kenneth Roberts
Driving Force Dick Francis

>75 christiguc: Christiguc, I didn't remember Sybil, and a rebours lost me completely, but I got it from the first three clues.

>84 myshelves: A bit of a guess, here, but it seems to fit: is it The Wind in the Willows?

(I was distracted by trying to do all sorts of clever things with Pitt and Tara and dowsing, but the simple solution looks a lot more plausible...)

thorold,

Right. It wasn't intended to be tricky, but I did want to avoid toads and badgers and moles. :-)

P.S. I loved Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland. :-)

OK, another book (should appeal to the vulgar fraction):

The wind in the willows by Kenneth Grahame
Daisy Miller, Pandora and Other Stories by Henry James
Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller
The Diary of a Nobody by George & Weedon Grossmith
History of the thirteen by Honoré de Balzac

Aha! Borrowing my mole? :-) The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾?

Yes!

Hm. . . Never heard of it. Vulgar? I guess teenagers can be.

#91

I haven't read it, only about it. But enough clues clicked.

I think "vulgar fraction" was used as a mathematical term --- a clue to 3/4. Sneaky. :-)

No clues in the lead in for any of you!

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values by Robert Pirsig
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton by Peter Weiss
The Devil in the White City : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes

Okay, I was kidding--I will give hints if anybody wants them. :)

I've got a mental picture of the Marquis de Sade riding his motorbike round the Château d'If cheered on by a bunch of Irishwomen and pursued by the Chicago serial killer, but I think I might be barking up the wrong tree :-)

Help!

I'm trying to think of a Count, or someone named Monty, who was persecuted or assassinated by someone who, after an inquiry, ended up in an ayslum. :-) Or did someone steal the keys to the asylum?

Madness and asylum and Count give me Dracula (plus Renfield), but I can't fit the rest.

I like my topic book, but if you ever come across a book like you're describing--let me know!

Here's another clue:

Secret Tibet by Fosco Maraini

The clue is Fosco Maraini??

Well, that let's me out. :-) Good luck, thorold.

I hope you all have read this. Now I'm not sure. . .

Someone else can post a puzzle--we can do more than one at a time (just in case nobody has read the book I'm getting at).

Ouch.

I cheated and googled. Yes, I did read it, but about 35 years ago. :-(

So, it isn't a book people haven't read. Just too long ago in my case.

Ok, to keep you busy in the meantime (no clue there):

Justice Hall Laurie R. King
A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway
The Lake Frome Monster Arthur W. Upfield
Bill the Galactic Hero: On the Planet of Zombie Vampires Harry Harrison & Jack C. Haldeman II
The Mother Earth News Almanac John Shuttleworth

myshelves,

I don't know if it's what you're going for, but Beowulf fits.

Good, 'cause that's what I was going for.

Couldn't tempt you to chase after those Zombie Vampires, huh? :-)

>100 myshelves: Ouch, indeed. I still don't see how Zen and the... fits in. Or is it the word 'the'?

I was trying to reference the art tutor--the one who starts off the narration?

myshelves,

yes--that's what took me so long! I was thinking of zombies (obviously from another planet because you referenced earth) coming out of the lake. And the thing is--I'm sure I've probably read something like that at some point in my life. . . :)

>93 christiguc:, 97 Ok. I had to Google this, too, and it's one I've never read. Funny thing is, I was trying to come up with one for Beowulf, too, but you beat me to it.

Here's another novel

The Game Players of Titan by Philip K. Dick
A Monstrous Regiment of Women By Laurie R. King
A River Runs Through it by Norman MacLean
The Chela and the Path by Elizabeth Clare Prophet
The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle

A League of their Own wasn't a book, was it?

I think it was only a movie, and this book is older than that. Good guess, though! I tried to make my clues more subtle this time, but I might have been too oblique...

Game, river and chela make me think of Kim; regiment would fit with that, but I can't remember whether Kim had red hair...

#112

Not sure, but I think he did!

I can't remember if Kim's hair was red, but I know his father's was. And the regiment's flag showed a red bull on a green ground. Anyway, Kim is correct!

Probably far too easy, but it was fun finding these. I think you could probably come up with a few dozen more that would fit, as well - I found about eight in ten minutes.

Mrs. Stevens hears the mermaids singing; a novel by May Sarton
With My Trousers Rolled: Familiar Essays by Joseph Epstein
Not Prince Hamlet: Literary and theatrical memoirs by Michael Meyer
Time to murder and create by Lawrence Block
I Am Lazarus: Stories by Anna Kavan

Edit: Absolutely no Googling these unless you're stuck!

Prufrock. Is it the poem, or a novel that uses it?

P.S. Isn't there a book about James & the Giant Peach? :-) Did he dare?

>115 myshelves: Yes, I was thinking of the poem.

I had James and the giant peach in my shortlist, but I found so many actual Prufrock-quotations used as titles that I dropped it again. The May Sarton is the only one I actually have in my library, but I was curious to see how many others there were. Answer: lots.

That's interesting. Very quotable, and well known, but I'm still surprised that there would be so many.

So . . . we can do poems? :-) I was working on one, but not getting too far. Didn't think of looking for lines used as titles.

Giving it a try, but not with lines used as titles:

Bread Ed McBain
Time Travelers Strictly Cash Spider Robinson
A Drink of Deadly Wine Kate Charles
Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit (Amber Brown) by Paula Danziger
The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse D. B. Wyndham Lewis (ed.)

I'll take the cash, and let the credit go! :-)

...oddly enough, it's "bread" that's the give-away there. Not very many poems about bread, at least not well-known poems.

OK, sticking with poetry, another easy one:

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
The realms of gold by Margaret Drabble
Mr. Sammler's planet by Saul Bellow
Wild surmise by Dorothy Porter
Watcher of the skies : explorations in English topics by Richard Baines

I can't fit the first one in. Never read it; does it involve the poem, or Keats?

#119

Just struck me --- I should have used a Harry Potter book!

>120 thorold::Thorold:

One of my favourite poems I think - Keats's On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer'?

>121 myshelves: - You'll only get it if you've read the book. It opens with the Swallows sitting on a crag, which they've christened "The Peak in Darien", looking out over the lake. IIRC, chapter one is called "The Peak in Darien".

#124
I see. It couldn't have been any other poem, but I had no idea about that clue. Ransome wrote children's books, right? Would an adult enjoy the book?

Re #119
Would using a Harry Potter book instead of Bread have slowed you down any? :-)

>125 myshelves:

I re-read them occasionally, but I don't know how much I would enjoy them now if I hadn't first encountered them as a child. They're very British, very 1930s and middle-class, which might put you off. On the other hand, they have a wonderfully eccentric, Baden-Powellish way of looking at the world - it's important for children to know how to tie a bowline knot, but they also have to be given space to have fun pretending to be pirates or explorers. School is a necessary evil, and provides an opportunity to find out about interesting people like Stout Cortez, but what matters in life are holidays, which should be conducted as far as possible withut adult interference...

Harry Potter would have taken me a bit longer, I think. One-word titles don't lay any false trails. My first thought when I saw the Bad Verse anthology was McGonagall - HP would have encouraged that diversion!

Poems seem to have died out again... I'll try something else. Back to books again:

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
It began in Vauxhall Gardens by Jean Plaidy
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The history of Amelia by Henry Fielding

>127 thorold::thorold: Oh, it might just be Vanity Fair?

That was quick - I'm going to have to work out how to make these harder without becoming completely obscure!

Another novel-
The Singing Detective - by Dennis Potter
The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
Scenes from Provincial Life by William Cooper
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
The History Boys by Alan Bennett

Everything touchstoned is a clue? Merry Wives is not?

> 131:Merry Wives is also a clue, just that touchstone didn't think it was one of Will's better plays! (true)

I don't suppose you mean The Last Kashmiri Rose?

My goodness this site can be addictive! I decided to stop being cheap and paid for an account earlier this week, and time just disappears. I'm sure you all understand. :)

But, taking a break from trying to add books to my collection, here's an easy one.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Killing the Lawyers by Reginald Hill
Ward Number Six and Other Stories by Anton Chekov
Internal Combustion: The Story of a Marriage and a Murder in the Motor City by Joyce Maynard
Guppy Handbook by C. W. Emmens

hazelk, if my guess is wrong, maybe you could give another clue?

#134

Gotta be Dickens. :-) Is that Bleak House?

Right on!

>134 christiguc:: sorry, your guess is wrong, so, two clues -

author's dates:1867-1931 and, more cryptically, his birthplace had six not five.

Aha - I thought it must be him, but I couldn't make one fit. I didn't pick up Potter-->Potteries :-(

Is it The Old Wives' Tale?

>138 thorold::thorold

That's ace. You're a star!

No I'm not - I was actually flicking through the Gutenberg e-text of it last night to see if I could make the clues fit, and failed miserably. Edit: and besides, I saw on your profile that you're a Bennett fan!

And now for something completely different (no, that's not a clue, before you ask, myshelves...) -- another book:

Positano by John Steinbeck
The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier by John Greenleaf Whittier
Barnes Wallis : A Biography by J. E. Morpurgo
The talented Clementine by by Sara Pennypacker
The first man in Rome by Colleen McCullough

The Talented Mr Ripley?

I haven't got another waiting so open to anyone to continue.

>141 abbottthomas: Correct!

Another novel -

Doctor in the House by Richard Gordon
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
Horrid Henry's Big Bad Book by Francesca Simon

I, for one, need a clue, I'm afraid. Thought of Snow White for the first two but that didn't last. Maybe (Horrid?) Dr. Henry Kissinger, American if not quiet, always sounded rather sleepy to me and certainly had strong Washington connections and must have kept a secret diary - I don't think he wrote novels though.

Do you mind if I throw another in while waiting on the strength of message 141? This should be easier and alludes to an extended quotation from the work.

Can such things be? by Ambrose Bierce
A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell
Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Luck of the Bodkins by P G Wodehouse

I know that one! It's Hamlet. I don't have one right now, so I'll do more thinking on hazelk's.

Anyone else is free to give one--we don't need to limit ourselves to one at a time. :)

Right, of course, christiquc

Gosh --- stay off the net for a day or so to avoid HP spoilers, and you miss a lot. :-)

hazelk, Please, pretty please touchstone (or put in bold type) only the clues. We've had some (most) where the book name counted but the author name didn't, some where the author name counted but the book title didn't, . . .

147>myshelves: sorry, should have read your reminder about this in an earlier post.

I'll start again:-

Doctor in the House by Richard Gordon
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
Horrid Henry's Big Bad Book by Francesca Simon

Should be a lot eaier now.

Washington Square?

>well done, christiguc! Washington Square it is.

Let's try this one:

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
Murder on the Leviathan by Boris Akunin
The Dancing Floor by Elizabeth Peters
Beat to Quarters by C. S. Forester
Please Pass the Guilt by Rex Stout

I forgot--I should have specified before that this is a short story. I hope maybe that helps.

How about The Tell-tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe?

You've got it!

I'll do another one. It's a novel.

Forbidden Knowledge : from Prometheus to Pornography by Roger Shattuck
Home Comforts: the art and science of keeping house by Cheryl Mendelson
Between Pets and People : the Importance of Animal Companionship by Alan Beck
Revenge by Stephen Fry
The Arctic Grail : the quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909 by Pierre Berton

Not Deathly Hallows?

I haven't read it, so that's not the one I had in mind. (Although now I'll be thinking of how it could fit. . . )

But there is another that I intended.

No spoiler there. All but Quest could fit most of the HP books. And we know he's looking for the horcruxes.

Frankenstein!

Exactly!

Another novel:

William Blake : the complete illuminated books by William Blake
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
The Archeology of Weapons : arms and armour from prehistory to the age of chivalry by Ewart Oakeshott
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle
The Prometheus Deception by Robert Ludlum

Still thinking about 161, but here's another novel to be going on with:

My Friend Judas by Andrew Sinclair
An Oxford Tragedy by J C Masterman
Dorset (Pevsner's Buildings of England) by Nikolaus Pevsner
The Magician by W Somerset Maugham
Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome by Joan D Vinge

I don't know if anybody's still playing, but just in case someone is and is too shy to ask for them, I'll give two more clues for the book in 161:

The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino
Criminal Convictions : errant essays on perpetrators of literary license by Nicolas Freeling

abbottthomas, I'm still thinking on yours but wouldn't mind a little extra clue. :)

>161 christiguc:: Still puzzled, but I'm working on it. Blake is a good confusing lead -- it could be someone called Blake (Sexton Blake, Nicholas Blake...), it could be a quotation from Blake (Chariots of fire, Arrows of desire, Burning bright,... -- all good titles for novels), it could be the word 'illuminated' (but there doesn't seem to be anything about Ukraine in the other clues....).

>162 abbottthomas:: I can make four out of five clues fit Jude the Obscure, but I can't see a link with The Magician -- possibly because I've never read it. I peeked at the Gutenberg text and saw there was a character called Susie - is it that? Otherwise, Dorset and Magician would suggest John Cowper Powys, but I guess he's a bit too obscure for this game...
T.E. Lawrence would fit pretty well too, but AFAIK he never wrote any novels!

>161 christiguc:: Thanks for the clues, christiquc - I'll have a punt on Don Quixote.

>162 abbottthomas:: The Magician refers to a minor talent of the heroine, not at all central to the plot, Mad Max to the author.

Zuleika Dobson!

You got it!

Another novel. Touchstones are very slow at the moment (maybe we need to start a new thread?) so please treat all the titles as clues:

Snow White by the brothers Grimm
The Castafiore emerald : the adventure of Tintin by Hergé
Percussion instruments and their history by James Blades
God's playground : a history of Poland vol. 2 by Norman Davies
Going postal : a novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

Edit: touchstones fixed

abbottthomas: Don Quixote it is! (#161)

#169,

Got here late. I made it to Knight Errant, but it was already solved. :-)

thorold, I'm still thinking on #168. It's taking me a little longer because whenever I try to think about the clues, The Wizard of Oz keeps on popping into my head, even though I know that's not it. :) Perhaps if nobody's gotten it in a little bit, you'll give us another hint?

I'm stumped. (Not for the first time.) But there's a lot I haven't read, so I can't be sure if I should know.

>171 christiguc: you're exactly right - it's not The Wizard of Oz (though I'm sure that would have been a good one to do!). Can't tell if you've read it, myshelves, but christiguc has got it in her library...

A couple of extra clues:

The grass is singing by Doris Lessing
The Bronski House: A Return to the Borderlands by Philip Marsden

The Tin Drum! I must have subconsciously known--that's why I kept on thinking of munchkins singing. Although, if Oskar had gone along with Dorothy, things probably would have been a little different. . .

No, I haven't read it. Guess I should?

I think this must be The Tin Drum. Been a looong time since I read it, but most of the clues fit, from what I remember.

oops -- Christiguc got it while i was writing this...

myshelves: yes, it's very good. I would recommend it.

Yes, well done all!
The Tin Drum is definitely worth reading if you have a bit of time to spare. Might make you look at Munchkins in a whole new way.

A novel:-
The Catholic Church of Peterborough by M A Sweeting
The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
Wives and Daughters by Mrs Gaskell
The Little Book of John Deere by Don MacMillan

A short history of tractors in Ukrainian?

I own it but haven't read it yet. But, just in case you're correct, here's another one. This one's a play.

The Darling Buds of May by H. E. Bates
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Mother Tongue : English and how it got that way by Bill Bryson
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Six Wives : the queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey

Peter Pan? :-)

Yes! :)

I probably should have disqualified myself. The first actress to play the role was a friend of my grandfather. I'm glancing over at a poster of her now. I was brought up on Peter. :-)

It must have been fun. I assume you went to the play often? And that's not a bad one to be brought up on. :)

(And at least now I know mine wasn't SO easy that everyone could get it in less than 3 minutes. . )

No, I think I saw it on stage once when I was little. I remember the crocodile, but have no clue about the cast. :-)

I meant that I was raised on the story, and on tales of my mother's childhood visits to "the real Peter Pan." Barrie wrote the play for her in 1905. :-)

>180 thorold::thorold:

Spot on, again, thorold!

I suspect that this one will be completely baffling for some, but solved in three minutes by anyone who knows the book in question:

No mean city by A. McArthur
The history of Mr Polly by H. G. Wells
The compleat angler by Izaak Walton
Scouting for boys by Robert Baden-Powell
The princess in the tower by Sharon Stewart

I'm beginning to think that I fall into the "baffling for some" category (and, yes, it did take me a long time to come to that conclusion). Do you know that one of us here knows the book in question? Does one of us have the book in our library?

I suspect that it's another of too many I haven't read.

Meantime, I've been thinking about this one for a while. By one of my favorite authors. The clues may be ridiculously easy or too obscure, but I feel sure you've read it.

Falcon: The Autobiography of His Grace James IV, King of Scots - A. J. Stewart
An Ancient Shopping Center: The Athenian Agora - American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Flower In The Desert - Walter Satterthwait
The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World - Harlan Ellison
Second Stage Lensman - E. E. "Doc" Smith

Well, right now I'm thinking The King Must Die, but I can't make Second Stage Lensman fit. No clues yet! Give me a bit more time. :)

>189 christiguc:,190

No, on closer inspection, none of us seem to have it in our libraries(*), and you all seem to have neglected the author, who is one of the very few Myshelves hasn't listed as a favourite. A pity, because it's great fun.

Extra clues:
Gorbals Trilogy by Ralph Glasser
The five red herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers

So at least you know which country we're in! Not really a clue, but it might jog some minds: the end of the 1st movement of the Leningrad Symphony.

(*)Must find out who nicked my copy. I've still got the two sequels, though.

#192

There's another one I can't make fit for The King Must Die. You'll have to tell me later how it fits. :-) Umm, I didn't say it's a novel.

#193,

No, one of the many not in my list of favorite authors. :-) Heck, I have 40-50 titles by some people I didn't even list.

I don't think I've read this. Remember, I'm just a semi-literate colonial. And we do have our own mean cities to read about. :-)

myshelves, Oedipus Rex could work with your clues.

thorold, I still have no idea on your book. I have a feeling that I'm going to have to add yet another book to my to-be-purchased list. . . :)

Not a play either. More clues?

myshelves--Sure. I can make the Bible (King James Version, of course) work. The New Testament, that is. But isn't that the beauty of any theological work? So, yes, I do think I need more clues.

thorold, I'm still thinking on yours, but I may cheat and google it if I don't get it tonight. :) It would probably help if I remembered what happened at the end of the first movement of the Leningrad Symphony. The first part was the German invasion of Russia, right? But I don't remember at what point the first movement ended. . . (I'm pretty much illiterate in classical music).

christiguc,

Not the KJV. The author isn't listed among my favorites. :-)
The word you seem to be hooking onto isn't a clue. Look elsewhere in that title.

Culture and Anarchy - Matthew Arnold
Miss Seeton Rocks the Cradle - Hamilton Crane

I'm not haivng much luck either (though I keep thinking I ought to get Thorold's!)
so here's a simple one ( I think!) to go on with (plus, all the clues are actually in my library)

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
You Just Don't Understand: Women and men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen
An Assembly Such as This by Pamela Aiden
An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym
Her Father's Daughter by Gene Stratton-Porter

>191 myshelves:,198

Still baffled on yours - if I take lensman and autobiography, that would cover Cecil Beaton's diaries, but then I can't make much else fit except 'ancient'.

'Flower in the desert' sounds as though it should be a cryptic crossword clue for 'Nile', but I doubt if that's what we're after...

Flaws in the glass would give me autobiography, Athens, desert, love, and the title could be twisted into a lens, but it doesn't fit the subsidiary clues.

Christopher Isherwood and "I am a camera..." doesn't get me very far either.

Am I barking up the wrong tree with photography?

Am I barking up the wrong tree with photography?

Yes, you are.

You told me that short titles were too easy, so I went for longer ones. But people seem to be pulling the wrong words out of these.

Another clue, plus hint:

Pitiless Parodies and Other Outrageous Verse by Frank Jacobs.

(No touchstone loading.)

P.S. And Isherwood isn't on that long list of favorite authors you found. :-) That comment was intended as an aid to elimination, if nothing else.

#199

I'm trying to fit them to An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, but having difficulty. Of course, I read it ages ago, so have a sketchy memory.

.202 No, that's not it.

>191 myshelves: Grrrrrr! With all those clues, it should be leaping out at me, but it isn't. I thought I was on to a good thing with Browning, but I can't make all the clues fit to one poem. Especially when I remembered that "Anton van Leeuwenhoek" was by A.S. Byatt's faux-Browning, not the real one. (Ouch!)

Then I tried Mark Twain, but reference to The Innocents Abroad reminded me that they weren't allowed to land at Athens.

You said it isn't a play, otherwise A Midsummer Night's Dream would have fitted all the original clues. I can't make it fit Gibbon or any of the other poets in your list, and everyone else seems to be a novelist...

>199 aviddiva:: Stuck on this one too. Four clues fit The Importance of being Earnest and a different four fit Pride and Prejudice...

thorold,

It is a poem. (I think you set the precedent of slipping them in. *grin*) (The extra hint that comes along with that last clue is the word "verse." The real clue is another word which appears in the poem.)

Gibbon was a poet? Sometimes the number of gaps in my knowledge frightens me. I listed him for the Decline & Fall.

#199

I'm stuck. I even peeked in your catalog to see if you list works by Algernon Blackwood, or Swinburne, or someone. :-) But I couldn't even find Flowers for Algernon.

Sorry, Flowers for Algernon is in my library, but not my catalog. As you may guess, I own rather more than 336 books. ;-) Guess I should spend more time entering titles and less time playing games! Here's another clue (also not in my catalog):

Doctor Dolittle's Delusion: Animals and the Uniqueness of Human Language by Stephen R. Anderson

myshelves,
I tried reading Browning last night to make him fit. You aren't referring to a collection of his poems? Because while I could fit your clues in a handful of his poems, I couldn't fit them all in one. The closest I came was Aristophanes' Apology and A Death in the Desert, but neither fits all the clues. Tonight I'm going to read Aeschylus and see what happens. At least I'm dusting off my poetry books. :)

thorold,
I tried to cheat and google your clues--I couldn't get that to work either. Perhaps once everyone gives up, you'll tell us? I want to know what this trilogy is that I am missing out on.

aviddiva,
I'm still working on yours. Thanks for the clue--hopefully it'll help.

#208

This is a single, very well-known poem, with 22 lines. Each clue contains a word or words from the poem or the title. Here's another. :-)

Coming of Age in Samoa - Margaret Mead

Re-reading Aeschylus is always good, but I'm counting him as a dramatist. :-)

>209 myshelves: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Would I be right in saying that you lack all conviction? I am definitely full of passionate intensity when I realise what's been vexing me into a nightmare for four days while I look at your clues with a gaze blank and piteous as the sun. But never mind. The revelation is at hand...

I really can't work out how I failed to see that. As you say, a very well-known poem, and one I've had to write essays about on more than one occasion in my mis-spent youth. I tried the falcon, but it got me sidetracked to Gerald Manley Hopkins, who isn't numbered among the elect. For some reason I never looked at Yeats at all. The penny only dropped when I saw "22 lines" - not a sonnet, and too short for Browning. It more-or-less had to be a 20th century poet.

myshelves--I have no excuse for not getting it earlier. Well done.

thorold,

*big grin* I guess that's a compliment in context, but I wouldn't really say that I lack all conviction. :-)

I thought that "Coming" of Age might link up to "Second" stage lensman for you. I was saving "Bethlehem Road" as a last resort. Slouching anywhere would have been a dead giveaway.

Hmmm. Now I know that I can use Browning? (I'll stay away from Hopkins.)

I did work on another favorite poem (by a 19th century author not on my list), but couldn't come up with any decent clues that weren't too obvious. Maybe I should do it anyway to atone. :-)

Surely the last resort would have been Things fall apart?

Shall I kill off my open puzzle? I'm pretty sure that you would have got it if you knew the book. The only thing that stops me revealing the answer is that Aviddiva has a closely-related book catalogued, and might still be in with a chance :-)

I did work on another favorite poem (by a 19th century author not on my list), but couldn't come up with any decent clues that weren't too obvious.

You mean something like this? Pretty sure it counts as too easy:

Tirra lirra, rhymes old and new by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
More Adventures on Willow Farm by Enid Blyton
Rethinking Camelot : JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. political culture by Noam Chomsky (touchstone for title not loading)
The lilies of the kitchen; onions, leeks, shallots, garlic and chives by Ernest Oldmeadow
The curse : confronting the last unmentionable taboo: menstruation by Karen Houppert

>214 thorold::Thorold

The Lady of Shallott by Tennyson?

Definitely too easy, then :-)

>209 myshelves:: Perhaps I should have got that as I read Slouching to Bethlehem by Joan Didion a month or two ago - didn't take enough notice of the first page!

>213 thorold:: How about another clue before you reveal all, thorold? Here's another poem to be going on with, quickly gettable I predict:

Northern Lights (His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman
A Streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Wiliams
Out of the Fiery Furnace: The impact of metals on the history of mankind by Robert Raymond
Burn Rate: How I survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet by Michael Wolff
The Dancing Stars: an Iroquois Legend by Ann F Rockwell

The Spanish touchstone is NOT relevant but a quirk of the selection offered and the last book is title not author - touchstone didn't appear.

The Cremation of Sam McGee, one of my favorite bedtime stories. (I once lit a fire on the marge of Lake Lebarge, in memory of Sam.)

More supplementary hints to the author of No.188 (specially selected for "mere colonials"):

The Rainbow through the Rain by Susan Tweedsmuir
The Governor-General by Christopher Forsyth
Old Transvaal Stories by Herman Charles Bosman

thorold,

Ok, I have read (and still own) a book by the author. :-) But if it was the same one, I don't recall enough details of the plot to fit in the clues.

>218 myshelves:: I thought it might be you who returned my service, myshelves.

>219 thorold:: Thanks, thorold. I've got several but only the Hannay stories and I can't fit those - on the basis of the 5th title, Huntingtower possibly but that is an uneducated guess.

To put everyone out of their misery: yes, Huntingtower. I suppose it's a bit of a minor work, but I always liked it, and I'm surprised it's not better known. Dickson McCunn, retired grocer in search of adventure, is a great character. Much more human than Hannay or Leithen. The Shostakovich clue was supposed to remind you of the soundtrack of the BBC dramatisation, but maybe that one didn't make it across the pond.

Grocers are queer cattle! I will give it a try, and I suppose I should read the Leithen stories as well.

Interesting. Never read him--or even heard that much about him. Just one of many gaps in my literary collection. :) I assume The Thirty-Nine Steps was the basis for the Hitchcock movie. So Huntingtower is his best?

So Huntingtower is his best?

Not sure if many people would agree with that, but I feel it shows a lot of his best qualities. It's more warm, funny and escapist than say The thirty-nine steps or Greenmantle, which have a strong element of World War One paranoia about them. Huntingtower is adventure for the fun of it: the Bolsheviks aren't particularly scary; Dickson McCunn and the Gorbals Die-Hards are great fun. Another favourite of mine is the Leithen story John MacNab , where four bored, respectable middle-aged men decide to go poaching for the thrill of it.

Got back online after you'd solved it! John Buchan is one of my favorites, but I haven't read Huntingtower or the other two in ages. That explains why I kept thinking I ought to know it, however!

Do you need another clue for mine? (#199)
The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

aviddiva,

I'd say Pygmalion, but I'm not sure where An Assembly Such as This would fit.

Buchan: I didn't think there was a princess or a tower in The 39 Steps. :-)

Yes, it's Pygmalion. Well Done! I thought it would be easier, but I guess the clues were generic enough to make it difficult. An Assembly Such As This was meant to refer to the Embassy Ball.

OK - another poem. Pretty clear where it's going but how well known is it?

Out for More Blood by Edward Thebaut
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
Enjoy Healthy Eating by Johanna Burani
Secret List of Heindrich Roehm by Michael Barak
Slaying the Dragon- How to turn your small steps into great feats by Michael Johnson

Guess touchstones aren't working. (You could use bold text instead.) The titles, not the authors are the clues? And the subtitle for the last one doesn't count?

More verse, not any worse. :-) I think it's easy, but I've been wrong before.

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Affair of the Mutilated Mink Coat - James Anderson
Red as Blood: or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer - Tanith Lee
The Hands of Innocence - Jeffrey Ashford
The Last of the Wine - Mary Renault

Blasted touchstones!

myshelves--as soon as I figured it out, all the clues started jumping off the page at me, practically beating me over the head. :) Ballad of Reading Gaol

christiguc,

Yes! Huzzah!

I was ready to go beyond the first 3 lines if I had to, but I thought that would do it. :-)

A poem:-

Michelangelo:The Vatican Frescoes by Pierluigi De Vecchi
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean
Thomas the Tank Engine by Rev. Audry
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber

>229 abbottthomas: & 230 Yes and yes, myshelves - just the titles

abbottthomas, Enjoy Healthy Eating makes me think Beowulf. And most clues fit--all but Secret List. I guess I'll have to go more obscure. :)

#236

I was thinking of that too But I couldn't fit secret or list, and we've already done Beowulf.

Blood, war, secret & slaying could probably fit a lot of things, but then healthy & eating have me stumped. :-) I suppose that anything through medieval might include a feast, but that all seems so generic.

The eating isn't healthy but said to be enjoyed. 'Secret list' applies to the horse. Much later than Beowulf - latter half of 20thC - but about a medieval dragon. Three stanzas of 19 lines each. Not a major poet and she may not really have made it across the Atlantic.

I think that let's me out. I'd be hard-pressed to recognize major British poets from that era. :-)

Sorry, I am being rather parochial! Perhaps I'll leave it here for a bit in case thorold recognizes it. He has two of the poet's collections in his library although not the one from which this came.

Don't give it away just yet - it's ringing faint bells, and I've been having fun looking through collections by cisatlantic (you said "across the pond" but didn't specify British, Irish, or Other...) women poets of the late 20th century. Now I know I should be looking at anthologies :-)

hazelk (#234)--how about another clue or hint? (Perhaps the poet's gender, nationality, or era?)

>242 christiguc::christiguc:
regarding my allusions @234: gender=male:century=20th

#234

With Michaelangelo & measure and dare and Thomas, I want to go for Prufrock again. But I can't do anything with Michael Faber.

>244 myshelves:-myshelves:

Indeed it's The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Re the Faber clue - Eliot worked for Faber & Faber as a literary editor and they publish him in the UK

Publishers?! :-)

>246 myshelves:: Is myshelves trying to tell me off?

Ok, taking the gloves off. *grin* (That's not a clue.)

novel:

Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - Charles MacKay
I Will Fight No More Forever: Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War - Merrill D. Beal
Florence Nightingale 1820-1910 - Cecil Woodham-Smith
Labor and Monopoly Capital; the Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century - Harry Braverman

#247

Just venting a little. I'd actually googled Faber and learned that F&F were UK publishers, but decided that that couldn't be the clue. ("Who would know the publisher?" I thought.) Turns out other people would. I didn't know he'd worked for them. Oh well. :-)

>248 myshelves:: The first literary "Dick" who springs to mind is Dick Diver. Nightingale would fit with the title of Tender is the Night, Diver avoided fighting in WW1 and psychiatric illness is a theme but I can't really fit the last title. Am I a bit thick or simply barking up the wrong tree completely?

#250,

Not thick; wrong tree. Might be missing the forest. :-)

>229 abbottthomas::abbotthomas:

Would the poet be Elizabeth Barrett Browning?

>253 abbottthomas:: hazelk: No, later than her. Born in 1929. Here's another clue, relating to the subject of the poem -

Paintings in the National Gallery, London by William Barcham

Born in 1929

Hmmm. (Googling...) It's probably not Adrienne Rich (unless I misunderstood which side of the pond we're talking about), and it's definitely not Peter Porter or Thom Gunn...

It's beginning to sound very much like U.A. Fanthorpe and that poem about Uccello's George and the Dragon.

>248 myshelves:

Florence Nightingale might suggest early Mary Renault, who is one of Myshelves's Favourites. But I don't remember a whale or a character called Ahab, Ishmael or Dick in Purposes of love. The friendly young ladies is set on a houseboat on the Thames and there's a canoe accident - maybe there was a whale involved in that? Can't remember the plots of the others for the moment. But they didn't go in for nose-piercing in British hospitals in the thirties. I suspect that I'm in another part of the forest altogether...

#254. Well done, thorold, quite right. I'm not sure how well U A T travels but I enjoy her (and her quirky career). I'm sure you know another 'painting' poem of hers about portraits of Tudor statesmen - "..The violently vulnerable neck." Good stuff.

I should have got it a lot faster than that - it was definitely what was ringing faint bells for me the other day, and I got the Fanthorpe collections down from the shelf to look at, but then other things got in the way, as they do, and I forgot about her again. I went off on a wild goose chase after Wendy Cope, which was fun, but of course didn't turn up any dragons...

#255
thorold,

You are thinking along the right lines. Not Mary Renault. (Yes, the author is a favorite *smile* - based upon this book.) I don't know if you've read the book; didn't find it in your catalog. (There are over 4000 copies on LT.)

It took me a while, but I'm going to guess One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Brilliant, Christiguc!

I had a couple of additional clues ready, and I'd probably have needed them if I'd been guessing. One had the word "shorts." :-)

Aha! Somehow, that's one I've yet to read.

myshelves--you tricked me for quite a long time by putting Moby Dick first. I was taking it literally for a while (thinking Moby, Dick, Richard, whale. . . ), and since it was at the beginning, it just messed up perception for everything that followed. Good job! :)

I have one for you all now. I hope it's not too easy/hard. I can never tell.

It's a novel:
The New Yorker book of lawyer cartoons by The New Yorker
Bridge: Techniques and Tips from the Masters by Robert Berthe
Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
The Sewing Circles of Herat by Christina Lamb
The Meanings of Macho : being a man in Mexico City by Matthew C. Gutmann

Not too easy for me. From the first 2, I thought I had an inspiration, but it didn't hold up. And after what I did with Moby & Florence, I'm not sure how to treat some of them. :-)

#263

myshelves,

Actually, the format for these 5 clues is fairly straightforward, even if their reference to the book isn't. It's the normal "take one word out of the title" for 4/5. In the other one, you need to take two words out of the title.

Now, a couple of the additional clues I have in mind (should they be needed) aren't necessarily going to follow that format. ;)

Is anyone else working on this? Does anyone else need a hint, a clue, a tiny fact about date or nationality or something? :-)

Whatever I think of, I run smack into Laughter and Forgetting, and can't fit it. If that one turns out to be a clue to genre, I'm not going to solve this one.

I'm fairly sure this is a well-known work.

I will accept either the french (original title) or the english title.

aviddiva doesn't have any works by this author.
myshelves doesn't have this author listed as a favorite. (!)
hazelk and thorold both have this author in their libraries, though not with the book in question.
abbotthomas has several books by this author, though not the book in question.

One last clue to help you pin-point the author:

Existentialism and Human Emotions by Jean-Paul Sartre

La Peste would fit all the new clues, but I can't read it on to the original ones!

Having got that far, I used the process of elimination, cheated and looked at the Wikipedia summary of La Chute, which I haven't read, but which seems to have a lawyer and a bar named "Mexico City", so I guess it's that. Definitely wouldn't have got it without the extra clues!

Good detecting, thorold.

Nope. I have a couple of books by the author, but not either of those.

Btw, y'all, stop picking on my "favorite authors." :-) (And why aren't you listing any?)

There are people with public catalogs who list hundreds. I have an excuse. Since people can't see the books or authors we share, the list is a possible way to connect with those sharing similar tastes. I used great restraint in keeping it that short. :-)

thorold,

yes, La Chute (a.k.a. The Fall) by Albert Camus is the answer!

I was looking through all of your libraries and saw L'Etranger (The Stranger), so I thought it was safe to do La Chute. I guess it isn't as widely read as I thought.

This one is another poem. And a book:

The middle passage by V.S. Naipaul
Bring me the head of Oliver Plunkett by Colin Bateman
The Iliad by Homer
Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson
Look to windward by Iain Banks

(probably another "dead easy if you know it" one, I fear, and at least one of you has it in their catalogue...)

#270

Question: Does spelling count here?

I'd never heard of "Mapp and Lucia" until you used it earlier, so know little about it. Could the clue be "map," or do we look only for exact words or for a reference to the book itself?

thorold (#270),

I could argue that Virgil's Aeneid works.

Dante's Divine Comedy also works. It fits the whole, but I haven't been able to fit all the clues into one section.

Hmmm. Does "a poem and a book" mean 2 works that share a title, or just one work?

>272 christiguc:,273 Yes, they sort of fit, but there's something more recent that fits better.

>271 myshelves:,274 Spelling counts, but there may be an honorific that's omitted; one work only.

Extra hint (lateral thinking required):

The evolution of the international economic order by Sir Arthur Lewis

(edited to touchstone the author)

I know exactly which poem you're talking about, I think! I just can't remember the title or author. It's the guy who wrote about St. Lucia island, bringing in Achilles et al., then the British expats, and then writing about a different time period. . . Am I on the right track?

Somebody please get the title because this is going to drive me crazy. :) (And if this isn't the one you're talking about, does anyone know what I'm talking about?)

Are you thinkng of Derek Walcott? I've got Tiepolo's Hound but that doesn't seem to fit. He did, however, write a book called The Odyssey which might be your poem - I don't know it.

Now I've looked in the catalogues of regular players it looks more like Omeros.

Omeros by Derek Walcott was the one I was thinking of. :) My description was a little off, but then again, so was my memory. . I think it fits the clues, though--even from what I remember.

Yes, well done! Omeros is the one with the fisherman called Achille and the expat called Plunkett.

I had trouble finding clues that pointed to Walcott and not to all the other works based on Homer. I thought Naipaul would give a hint about the Caribbean, but obviously it didn't go far enough: slavery fits into lots of other places.

Of course Omeros is in terza rima, so Dante was a good guess too...

This is a novel. At least one regular player has this in his/her library.

Standing Alone in Mecca : an American woman's struggle for the soul of Islam by Asra Nomani
The Noel Coward Diaries by Noel Coward
The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco
The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker
The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett

Hmm - the first two clues are shouting 'Lord Jim' at me, but I don't think I can make it fit the rest...

REQUEST: This topic, with so many touchstones, is starting to take way too long to load. (I have dial-up.) Will whoever posts the next new puzzle please start an "Allusions 2" topic, and leave a message here directing people to it?

Thanks.

thorold,

Hm. . . well it IS Lord Jim!

The island references the island where he went after the disgrace when other jobs weren't enough to escape his infamy. There he met a woman (Jewel). When the raiders land and are driven off, the leader's son (Dain) is killed. That's why they seek revenge on Jim in the end.

>283 christiguc: Oops - laziness is its own reward! I did vaguely remember that there was an island involved, but I'd forgotten Dain and Jewel.

>282 myshelves: Seconded. Or should we create a group? I expect we'll get bored with this game sooner or later, though.

This thread has been retired because it's getting too large. There are no open puzzles in this thread, but you can find the continuation here.