Let’s try a new game today! (I’m calling this game “Guess what we’re reading” but if you can think of something slightly more inspired, please suggest it.)
Grab the book you’re currently reading, open to the spot where you left off (or turn on your audio player if it’s an audiobook) and, as a comment below, give us the next 50 words. Other readers will try to guess your book while you try to guess theirs.
Here are the rules:
- If you’re reading more than one book, submit as many as you like — just put them in separate comments.
- When you guess someone’s book, reply directly to that comment so we keep the threads neatly organized.
- Please keep your 50 words family-friendly. If you happen to be lingering over a particularly steamy or gory scene, turn the page. If there are any other issues with your 50 words (e.g., major spoiler) do likewise.
- When you guess books, you may not use any resources outside of your own brain. No Google, no Amazon, no looking in the books on your shelves, etc. Where’s the fun in that?
- Don’t spoil the fun by naming all the books. Let us know you recognize it and make a comment about how well you like it, but let others figure some out, too. Feel free to guess as much as you like, though.
- Come back to let us know if your book was guessed correctly. If it’s been over a week, please tell us the answer.
As always, one random commenter will win a book from our stacks. You don’t have to guess anything correctly to win the book — all you have to do is play the game.
I’ll start:
Hesitant thoughts fleeing through the boy’s mind could be felt under Katsuk’s hand. Once more, Katsuk whispered, letting his words flow through his spirit powers: “I must make you my spirit brother because of the photographs.” Then: “I have your clothes. I’ll wait in the hall.”
He felt the words…
ANSWER: Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert. I doubt anyone’s read that, but maybe Sandy has.
Nope…after that third “Dune” book and the painfully slow “Destination: Void,” I kind of gave up on the dude….
Naala rescued me for the time being. “This is more interesting, and I hope to persuade you to tell us about it. I have seen His Excellency in the cathedral a score of times, it might be. Still I have never spoken to him. My Amerikan friend has never spoken to him either, of that I feel most sure…”
A Qersnyk never walked where he could ride. Tsering suspected there were some whose feet might never have touched the earth, having gone directly from cradle board to saddle.
She returned with the young messenger, walking while he rode, his feet sticking out as he straddled the pony’s roan barrel. The horse betrayed no uncertainty in shuffling across the Wreaking, hoofbeats muffled by drifts of ash, and the child was as fearless.
I don’t know the book, but I think I know the writer. This writer has written military fiction and has a vampire/alternate universe series, one of which was set in Moscow.
Barrett thought he had been in custody for four weeks when they took him from his cell and transferred him to the interrogation department. He was not sure, because he had been having some difficulty keeping an accurate count of the passing days, but he thought it was about four weeks.
ANSWER: Robert Silverberg’s “Hawksbill Station” (1968).
Ah ha. I almost guessed Robert Silverberg, knowing your reading tastes and thinking that sounded familiar.
Guess I’m getting too predictable, Kat. Maybe I should start reading some Jackie Collins novels, just to throw you off! :)
Tamas approached the barred doors of the chapel. A pair of Tamas’s soldiers emerged from the shadows by the wall, muskets at the ready. Tamas nodded to them and gestured to the door.
One of the soliders removed a long knife from his belt and slid it between the doors to the chapels. “He flipped the Diocel’s latch,” said the soldier fiddling with the knife, “but he didn’t even bother to stack anything in front of the door. NOt very enterprising, if you ask me.”
I know this book! I absolutely loved it. I hope you like it too!
I like it quite well so far. :-)
So glad somebody recognized it! I haven’t recognized any excerpts here at all.
“We were driving on a hard, dirt roadway through a cathedral of enormous trees.It seemed to go on forever and ever. I felt safe in that place. Occasionally, we startled a deer, surprised a fox crossing or standing near the road. In places the road was marked by hoofprints. The sunlight was sometimes filtered through leaves…”
I know that one! I re-read it recently.
OK, nobody’s calling this one?? It’s Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny…. right?
Peace only managed a weak laugh. “‘Set a thief to catch a thief,’ yeah? Only it doesn’t work unless you get hold of a better thief than the one you’re looking for.”
“And yet,” I reminded him, “here I am.”
“Only because someone ratted me out. You didn’t find me by looking.”
“Ours? There are no ‘our’ needs.”
He looked a little stunned and hurt. “We need to find out who ordered my shintai stolen.”
“That is your need,” Nikki said.
“Have you forgotten the tanuki in your home?”
She was really starting to hate how she’d lost control of her life days ago.
I have no guesses on the other books! I’m way, way behind in my reading. But another clue to mine, released about 7 months ago, and here the beginning two paragraphs:
“Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is escape your powerful, control-freak mother,” Nikki whispered to the mirror hung on the back of the apartment’s door.
“Miss Delany,” the policeman said on the other side of the door. “I have a court order for your commitment to a psychiatric center for evaluation. Please open the door.”
I’m quite enjoying it, but I do like this author’s other two series better.
Um…. this game is harder than I thought it would be…
OK, Kat, I’ll make it easier for you. How about this one: “The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play, so we sat in the house all that cold, cold wet day. I sat there with Sally. We sat here we two, and we said, How we wish we had something to do…. ” :)
Gee, Sandy.
I do not know. I just do not know.
I am starting to think that perhaps I am slow.
I sit here and think and I think think think, but nothing comes to me, I must need a drink. A pink drink, I think.
I think the Cat in the Hat would approve of your selection! :)
I need more clues. I need more clues.
Otherwise I know I’ll lose.
What? Lose? Oh, no, you say,
If we lose the clues, what books will we give away?
I’m in between books at the moment, but here’s a section chosen from a book I read recently:
“Because my plan had been to locate and single out one of you – or knock a bunch of you silly, then single out someone who came looking for you – and follow him back to wherever it is you loiter to figure out if you’re the ones poisoning the Delacroix…”
“But Ka-a-at,” Marion whined,”This game is toooo hard!”
She has, however, chosen a lucky individual upon whom we will bestow a book.
Melita K, if you live in the USA, you win a book of your choice from our stacks.
Please contact me (Marion) with your choice and a US address. Happy reading!
OK, so next time we do this, we’ll choose a book from our shelves that we think people will be familiar with and pick a random 50 words. I think that might work better.