The book dialog game

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Silly! George is a boy's name

Hey! Nancy Drew's best friend was named George.

[poohbear_nc]

OK - here goes:

"I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self."

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

OK - here goes:

"I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self."

That sound suspiciously like David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

Spoilered in case others would also like to guess if I'm right.

[EDIT: Unspoilered, because I'm not right. Sigh....]

[poohbear_nc]

Nope - you're not right!
Keep guessing (unless you Googled! Shame!)

[poohbear_nc]

Here's another:

"As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump."

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by issybird

Hey! Nancy Drew's best friend was named George.

And, of course, now I think about it, Enid Blyton's Famous Five character George was a girl. My apologies.

Not Dickens, Shelly. Frankenstein.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Not Dickens, Shelly. Frankenstein.

Yes! Well done! I was trying to avoid any "obvious" passages!
Take it away!

Yeah, well I read Frankenstein for the first time earlier this year. Highly recommend it to anyone who never has. Completely different from the entertaining, but cheesy films. So new selection:

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves.

[anjirlly]

LeGuin's Four Ways to Forgiveness?

Originally Posted by anjirlly

LeGuin's Four Ways to Forgiveness?

No, and not of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre. Here is another clue:

In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is

[poohbear_nc]

Sinclair Lewis?

Sinclair Lewis? No, but good guess. I suspect this will give it away, but it will be in the morning before I will be able to check any more tries.

The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and then took the migrant way to the West.

[issybird]

Grapes of Wrath?

Originally Posted by issybird

Grapes of Wrath?

That's it.