SAMPLE EXCERPTS
The Great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone / J.K.Rowling
Seabiscuit: An American Legend / Lauren Hillenbrand
Blood Canticle / Anne Rice
Frankenstein / Mary Shelley
___________
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
. . . . . Seven years later, just after midnight, Zelda was locked in a room at the Highland Mental Hospital, where she was waiting for shock treatment that was to be administered the next day. A fire broke out, ending her life. In her room were the love letters that she had written to Scott. She had “saved him the waltz,” as long as she had been able. One of Zelda’s most poignant quotations was, “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
Their daughter, Scottie, had both her parents’ bodies moved to a family plot in Saint Mary’s Cemetery, in Maryland, where they share a single headstone. Their epitaph is a quotation from The Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Her restless parents were at last at rest. Scott and Zelda achieved in death what they could not in life, to be together, in peace.
Return to Excerpts Menu
_______________
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
J. K. Rowling
FOR JESSICA, who loves stories.
FOR ANNE, who loved them too.
AND FOR DI, who read this one first.
The story of the Dedication for the first Harry Potter book begins in Britain in 1964, when two eighteen- year- old strangers met on a train. The woman, Anne Volant, (in a ruse as old as time) told Peter Rowling that she was cold. He gallantly offered her half his coat. This was followed by a lengthy conversation, which culminated with kisses. By the time they reached Scotland, they had forged a bond that would last for the rest of their lives. Their daughter Joanne was a result of this chance encounter, followed by her sister Dianne (Di) two years later.
Return to Excerpts Menu
_________________
Seabiscuit: An American Legend
Lauren Hillenbrand
. . . Laura finally got a correct diagnosis of her illness, so that it could be properly treated. Her affliction was chronic fatigue syndrome, which had been triggered by food poisoning. She also heard about the story of the Depression- era horse Seabiscuit, a discovery that would change her life. Her passion to write a book about him gave her a new lease on life. Just as the racehorse had given hope to a country mired in the Great Depression, he did the same for Laura. In 2001, Random House made her dream a reality when they published the story of the horse that had given inspiration to a nation in the tragic decade of the 1930s. When her publisher and agent phoned her and yelled simultaneously that her book had topped the best seller list, Borden opened a window and screamed the same amazing words to the neighborhood.
In June, 2004, when there was an oasis in the desert of her disease, Borden rented a hotel room. They had a romantic dinner, which Laura was well enough to enjoy. When they returned to their room, Borden had arranged for it to be strewn with rose petals, and there were candles and champagne. When he went down on one knee to propose, they both began to cry when she accepted the proposal from her lover and steadfast best friend. His love and loyalty had saved her; it had also been the source of her strength which, in turn, had allowed Seabiscuit to gallop once more.
Return to Excerpts Menu
________________
Blood Canticle
Anne Rice
Stan Rice, her husband, more than anyone else, tried to prevent his wife Anne from becoming, as one of her novels is named, “The Queen of the Damned.”
When Anne was seventeen years old, she was extremely upset when her father told his four daughters and second wife that the post office (where he was employed) was transferring him from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Richardson, Texas. Like any other teenage girl, she was distraught at having to leave her friends. Little did she realize, however, that she was on the way to meeting the greatest friend of her life . . .
Return to Excerpts Menu
______________
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Three men would forever impact author Mary Shelley’s life, as well as the history of Gothic literature: her father, William Godwin, the radical anarchist atheist philosopher; her husband, Percy Bysse Shelley, the doomed, Romantic poet; and her creation, Victor Frankenstein, the tortured modern Prometheus.
William Godwin met his future wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, at a dinner party in London. He found himself extremely irritated by the woman who kept interrupting one of the guests, Thomas Paine, in order to disagree with the eminent writer on nearly every subject.
William and Mary were not to see each other for many years; however, when they met again at the home of Mary Hays, William’s initial irritation was replaced with passion. Although they both were, in theory, against the “slavery of marriage,” when Mary discovered she was pregnant, William asked her to marry him because he wanted his baby to be legitimate. Although Godwin was an atheist, they were married in St. Pancras Church.
Their union, however, did not mean conventionality; they moved into two adjoining households, which they called the Polygon, so that they could retain their individual autonomy…
Return to Excerpts Menu
|
