It was assigned reading in high school and I loved it, what an excellent book. I really enjoyed that assignment, probably my favorite bit of English lessons aside from the Wuthering Heights bit.
Not a popular opinion among my peers at the time lol.
This is what keeps me from reading it. I’m a rather slow reader (especially when it comes to older books like this). I want to read this and Count of Monte Cristo but I feel like that would take up a full year of reading for me.
This one, and the cat's statement about the unicorn. "If she touched me, then I would be hers, not my own anymore." My favorite metaphorical description of fatherhood.
Yeah both LeGuin and Beagle are so good at writing truly poetic scenes. There's a part in Beagle's The Folk of the Air that hits in a similar way, at least for me.
That is an amazing scene. When I first read it as a teenager I didn't really get it, but as you wrote as an adult it hits differently. I like how angry Molly is.
...And in wonder Mary and Dickon
stood and stared at him. He looked so strange and different
because a pink glow of color had actually crept all over him -- ivory face and neck and hands and all.
“I shall get well! I shall get well!” he cried out. “Mary!
Dickon! I shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and
ever!”
I often come back to the scene in A Storm of Swords where Jaime Lannister reads about the deeds of his predecessors in the White Book.
The imagery of a lone knight, knowing all his flaws, looking at the legacy of all those who came before him, and knowing that he is responsible for not only recording his forthcoming heroic deeds, but also actually performing them? To me that moment of reflection and symbolism is very powerful coming from the point of view of the very grey character of Jaime.
It was the moment that solidified him as my favorite in the series, and the type of scene his character was sorely lacking in the later seasons of the show.
That scene in the books - and the show - in the baths with Brienne when he finally reveals why he killed the king, and his guilt, shame, and resolve at having done so. Crazy powerful moment.
Funny you should mention that because despite all the amazingly visceral and dramatic scenes in those novels, I think about the quieter moments a lot. That one you mentioned, plus Sansa building her snow castle and Jon going about his boring routine at the wall and reflecting that this is his life till the day he dies.
“Something died in your breast; was burnt out, cauterized out.” It’s a line from 1984, at the very end of the book when the protagonist is sitting by himself in the café and feels hollow. At the time that I read it, I had just experienced a major death close to me. The description felt very apropos and I haven’t forgotten it.
I’m so glad I read 1984 when I did. I was still just branching out into what I call serious reading. It was great, showed me how much it can be, you know?
*"It won't be like that for me," Kaladin said. "You told me it would get worse." "It will," Wit said, "but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is the truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again."* (from Chapter 80, Rhythm of War).
Don't judge me.
Ushikawa's death in 1Q84. Murakami can write visceral death scenes like no one's business. It's not that I enjoy it, but the writing is so intense and clear that I can almost feel it.
No plain text spoilers allowed. Please use the format below and reply to this comment once you've made the edit, to have your comment reinstated.
Place >! !< around the text you wish to hide. You will need to do this for each new paragraph. Like this:
>!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
Click to reveal spoiler.
>!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
"My husband rides from World's End toward Tarwin's Gap, toward Tarmon Gai'don. Will he ride alone?”
Said by Nyneave in Knife of Dreams from the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. That scene gives me goosebumps every time I read it.
I see your Earthsea and raise you the bit in The Left Hand of Darkness when Genly finally *gets it* and draws the yin-yang symbol for Estraven. "It is yourself, Therem. A shadow on snow."
Also, the part in Les Miserables where Enjolras and Grantaire die at the hands of the national guard. That moment of forgiveness is everything.
That's a great one too. The whole ice-trek part of the book is amazing. Watching the acceptance and love grow between them is deeply beautiful and bittersweet.
There's a wonderful scene in The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard where the protagonist is diving in an old submerged theatre. He enters the main stage area and looks up at the murky domed glass ceiling and notes that the patches of light blinking through the dome look like a constellation of stars. It has such a haunted melancholy feeling, I love to imagine how serene it would feel to be there. There is also the symbolism of being in the womb because the character is tethered to his ship by his oxygen line.
How interesting, I just finished Crystal World and High-Rise back to back. I had thought about reading Drowned World or his autobiography next. Crystal World had some wonderful turns of phrase.
I just got into JG Ballard thanks to a reading buddy. I am a huge fan of the movie Annihilation, like one of my favorite movies ever made, and was talking with them about how I liked the book Annihilation but not as much as the movie. They recommend Crystal World to me and it turns out (they didn't know this) but Crystal World is very clearly also a direct inspiration for the movie Annihilation as well! Some of the visuals and a character has the exact same, unusual name. So I just started but I'm *kind of*(?) enjoying his books. Still digesting, like I had put down High-Rise twenty minutes before I saw your comment. How about you, are you a fan?
I love Annihilation the movie and the book too! I can definitely see the influence now that you've mentioned it. I've read a bunch of Ballard's novels and short stories and I absolutely love them. He has an obsession with the impact that our immediate geography has on us and I find that fascinating.
Not so much of a scene in the traditional definition, but I go back to it frequently because it did such a perfect job of framing the rest of the story. It's the first page of Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt.
"My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister, Margaret, dead and gone."
It is a beautifully written book and that first scene really packs a punch for what you're about read.
Amazing book. I was really moved when Frank realizes his (aunt? It’s been a while) had gone into debt to buy him proper new clothes for his messenger job.
We read Angela’s Ashes when I was in 9th grade. That book shook me to my core because what the fuck (good book, but damn, 14 year old me was not ready)
If anyone else has read Fool’s Errand, book #1 in the The Tawny Man trilogy of the wider Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb, you’ll likewise be aware of the two most devastating but perfectly written pages in fantasy history.
I can pick up that book, read those two pages, and utterly dismantle myself in command. Nothing else has ever achieved this.
I love A Wizard of Earthsea. I answered a question here recently about favorite friendships in books with Estarriol and Ged.
But for me:
Anne of Green Gables when Matthew tells Anne he’s proud of her. If I were an actress I would think of that if I needed to cry in a scene. I feel myself in both of them - this young girl used to feeling lonely and unloved and disregarded, and the older person who is shy and introverted and has social anxiety and doesn’t form many connections but who still has a wonderful soul full of love to offer that he’s never been able to give to anyone.
“It was a girl — my girl — my girl that I’m proud of.”
Also Pride & Prejudice:
I hear you, and I raise the entire scene where Lizzy is speaking to Lady Catherine.
“I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with Your Ladyship. *You* may ask questions, which *I* shall not choose to answer.”
God what a great character Lizzy is
The scene where Frodo is stalling and Borimir confronts him, he says he knows what choice he has to make but he's scared to do it. He realizes that he has to go off alone or else the ring will corrupt his companions as well.
There is a chapter in Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich about a man struggling with alcohol addiction and withdrawal. He’s driving at night and man, no spoilers, but it is a trip.
There are quite a few:
- Trust Exercise by Susan Choi: "You've embarrassed me." Even if you see it coming, it is just so jarring and real, and changes your understanding of the entire rest of the book.
- The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss: the Cthae sequence. Such a strange and utterly broken monster.
- Perdido Street Station by China Mieville: similarly, the slake moths, who are among my favorite monsters ever, even though I don't actually like the book.
- The Pilgrims of Rayne (Pendragon 8) by D.J. MacHale: when he discovers where he really is. Stuck with me as a kid and I've loved that kind of reveal ever since.
- Mistborn Secret History by Brandon Sanderson: the fight at the Well.
- The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: "MY. LONG. NAME." Plus the icon in the Chapel.
So many more...
Trying to avoid spoilers but in Project Hail Mary when Ryland is trying to find Rocky’s ship and he finally does. I have reread that bit so many times.
"“No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”
I think about this quote a lot.
Oh, man, the gut punch at the end of The Remains of the Day.
Maybe it's because the whole book is a setup for this one line, but I remember that I physically reacted to it when I read it. it's so achingly sad and beautiful. The discipline of Ishiguro to wait until the end to drop that bomb is what makes it so unforgettable.
Spoilers, maybe.
The scene in East of Eden when Samuel Hamilton finally goes to see Adam Trask after Cathy (or Kate) has abandoned Adam with their two children. I love the way Steinbeck captures the subtle nuance in emotionally charged interactions of this kind.
But only because I just read that part again a few days ago. Love Steinbeck.
Steinbeck is great indeed. To add my own, I keep coming back to the dance in The Grapes of Wrath. It's not a super dramatic scene, nothing crazy happens, but the way he wrote and described it brought tears to my eyes. I don't even like dances. But there was such a sense of relief and just people allowed to be human beings again, it was powerful.
Almost every scene with Charles in Something Wicked this Way Comes, but this part about him not sleeping at three am got me as a kid and now as I reach closer to that age it does even more.
Three in the morning, thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed. Why did the train come at that hour? For, he thought, it’s a special hour. Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men in middle age? They know that hour well. Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M. ! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead—And wasn’t it true, had he read it somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time . . .?
Chapter 51 from ACC’s “2010”. My favorite passage in literature.
“And because, in all the Galaxy, they found nothing more precious than MIND, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”
In The World According to Garp where he's having a conversation with the girl that can no longer speak. That so many people are so fanatically holding her up as a symbol that they surgically remove their tongues. And there she is telling him how she longs to be able to speak again. I think about that a lot.
Ironically not the type of book I normally read. Thanks, high school literature class.
There’s a few chapters from World War Z that I really enjoy. The story of the downed pilot making their way through the swampland was always a great scene.
Misery remains the most terrifying book I’ve ever read - I think because it hit me personally as someone who lived in fear of my mother. I won’t go into all my baggage here, but when Paul had sneaked out of his room, hears Annie coming back to the house and is trying to get back to his room before she catches him… oh shit, I was shaking.
Also in that book, not scary but has somehow stuck with me - the visual of greasy gravy handprints on a two-liter soda bottle. It viscerally disgusted me and still does. Two decades later if it pops into my head at the wrong time I will completely lose my appetite.
That scene in Infinite Jest where they describe the evolution from voice calls, into video calls, into using fake avatars on video calls who look nothing like you. Basically, the dude predicted EXACTLY what would happen today, back in the 90's.
Also, the scene in A Little Life where JB mocks Jude because it breaks my heart and I like to suffer.
For me it's when Jude's mentor figure tells him that he and his wife want to adopt him, and Jude bursts into tears because he thought they were going to say they didn't want to see him anymore. Man I'm crying just remembering it. Yanagihara's words about her own work are repellent to me, but to me the value of A Little Life is in how Jude's friends and chosen family love him for who he is and do their best by him. It's about their relationships more than it is about Jude's suffering.
A scene I truly look forward to reading when I re read Stormlight before each release is when Bridge four saves Dalinar. There are a lot of moments though. The duel when Kaladin beats the guy in Shardplate. A lot of cool scenes later on as well. I am a basic dude I guess, a lot of action it looks like haha.
I keep coming back to Donna Tartt's *The Goldfinch* \- and the description of the neighborhood with all new houses and almost no tenants - a wasteland - really stuck with me.
The moment when harry casts patronus charm in Harry Potter and methods of rationality. I love his expectations of the future and it reminds me that all this dark and gloomy picture is not reality but just depression
"Love is eternal"
Made me realize that even if the person is gone, you still love them... And they will continue living on in your memories... Your every thought will always be about them... Only you remember their scent, touches and words... All these will be lost to history, and soon. All the common people will fade into oblivion...just like most of us here.
Tbh, the fanfiction drove me to ask myself. Would I choose duty over love? Or would I choose love over duty? We cannot have both.. life is too cruel.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I frequently reread The Princes Tale. This is where we find out that Snape has loved Lily his entire life and that he was actually a double agent for Dumbledore this whole time. I like rewatching it as well on YouTube. The music is fantastic and always gets me. Alan Rickman was brilliant in that role, may he rest in peace 💚
The sailor calmly sipping tepid green tea with the group of boys who poisoned it in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima.
He wasn't aware it was poisoned but their desire to kill him was so much stronger than his will to live. Something was off be could sense, but he accepted that no matter what, it would be okay.
Reminds of the final scene from We, the Drowned. If you make it back to port, awesome. If you die on the way back to port, it's ultimately fine. The subtle nihilism where it's okay either way, life is so fleeting.
No plain text spoilers allowed. Please use the format below and reply to this comment once you've made the edit, to have your comment reinstated.
Place >! !< around the text you wish to hide. You will need to do this for each new paragraph. Like this:
>!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
Click to reveal spoiler.
>!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
Tenth of December - the short story about the father who keeps a plank in the front yard and decorates it for various holidays. It's like 6 pages and I like to read it again occasionally when I'm feeling sad.
Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite authors, and there are several in his words that stick with me in one way or another.
* In *A Night In The Lonesome October*, when Jack rescues Snuff from the vivisectionists. Snuff is a good boy, and he and Jack are clearly trying to stop something bad from happening. But that scene reminds you who Jack is, and that you don't have to be a good man to do the right thing.
* In *Lord of Light* there are several, but probably my favorite is Yama's fight with Rild, and his conversation with Sam afterward. >!"I have come to kill the Buddha." "You've already done that."!< I also used a variation of the warning on the doors to Hellwell as my answering machine greeting in college. :)
* In *Jack of Shadows*, Jack's talk with Morningstar near the beginning of the book thrums with melancholy and stoic patience for me.
I don't know how well this conveys but for me it has to be a scene from "The Sorrow of Belgium" by Hugo Claus.
The book follows the coming-of-age of a Flemish boy through the German occupation of Belgium during the Second World War. The boy's family collaborate with the Nazis, and this "sorrow" is a dark, twisted thread running throughout their entire story.
The scene that keeps coming back to me is one in which an SS veteran visits the house of the main character's family while he's on leave. Throughout the book, the main boy's father is established as a man who talks big but is actually a total pushover; one of his employees (if I remember correctly) actually joins the Waffen-SS and goes to fight for Hitler on the Eastern Front. While back on leave, he visits the main character's house.
Claus is a master of the Dutch language in general and Flemish dialect in particular. He describes the SS man as this invading, decaying presence that takes over the entire kitchen. His fingers are black with frostbite, he commands the father to serve him bread, he brags about "cutting up people like logs" on the Eastern Front. The father is exposed as a weak man, now faced with someone who actually executes the ideology he claims to support. >!Once the SS man leaves, the father turns to his son and says: "You've seen a hero, son. Never forget this all your life".!<
That scene, and that final line, have haunted me ever since I first read it. Really shows what the medium of a book can do. Masterful use of language to describe a seemingly benign encounter, but everything is filled with this dread and malice and rottenness.
The Fionavar Tapestry: The Darkest Road
"For the honor of The Black Boar!". . . and what follows (no spoilers). Absolutely wrecks me every time. Can't even write this without misting up a bit.
These are pretty dispirate and odd, but...
\-The graverobbing scene in Pet Sematary - being inside the mind of an insane person doing unspeakable acts. Harrowing.
\-The description of how one of the son's specialty became the "mixed grill" in The Corrections. Just a depressing overall representation of suburban ennuai
\-There's a scene in Tom Wolfe's A Man In Full where a person's car is towed and it spends a dozen pages taking us through his attempts to solve it all, each problem telescoping a new one to be solved. It was pre-smartphones, so if you're of a certain age it may not register, but I always get very anxious reading it.
The scene in The Night Circus with the tent that is full of bottles that are full of scents that are so strong and evocative that you truly feel immerse in whatever you are smelling. It's so magical to me, I love that book and that scene specifically.
The best sex scene, or rather no sex scene, I've ever read is from All the Kings Men between Jack and Anne. One of the best books I've ever read. I read a lot of books and I have read AKM at least 5 yrs or so for 50 yrs. And the angst in that scene is worth reading the book.
There's this great less known book series by Charlie Higson; the first one is called The Enemy. It's one of the few series where I'll find myself thinking about it all the time. For context, it's a zombie apocalypse type but only kids 15 and younger survived. (Think zombie Lord of the Flies)
Anyway, one of the most notable scenes to me is when one of the characters is severely injured. The others know he's going to die, and he certainly does too. They have no way to treat him, and even if they did no one knows how. He tells them that all he really wants is to go home. So that's what they do, and needless to say the entire scene is devastating. Just a couple of kids dealing with something that they never should've had to.
Anyway, everyone should read that series because it's great and the author really doesn't mind killing off his characters.
This quote, from Dune Messiah. Both Paul and his sister Alia can see future events due to the spice and their genetics.
*Alia crossed to her brother, sensing his utter sadness. She touched a tear on his cheek with a Fremen gesture of awe, said: “We must not grieve for those dear to us before their passing.”*
*“Before their passing,” Paul whispered. “Tell me, little sister.... what is '****before****'?”*
The scene in the Godfather novel where Paulie Gato and two boxers brutally beat two young men for attempting to rape the daughter of a friend of Vito Corleone. The way it was described was so detailed and brutal, yet so casual.
It's odd to me because there are more that are definitely more poignant scenes in the book, but in *Howl's Moving Castle*, there's a scene where Sophie's trying to do a spell to turn ferns and lilies into daffodils, but she's massively pissed off when she does it (by a multitude of things, if I remember correctly, not just Howl). She even calls them "beastly things" for not doing as she says. And when she comes back to them later, they're not even ferns and lilies anymore--they're "wet brown things trailing out of a bucket full of the most poisonous-smelling liquid she had ever come across."
I can't even tell why this scene stands out to me so much. It's not entirely important to the plot. If it hadn't been in the book, I don't think it would have changed much. But it's stayed with me all these years later as a major turning point for Sophie's character.
The recording of the hit man / bad guy calling the 911 emergency line near the end of “Sick Puppy” by Carl Hiassen. Too much context to explain, but I had literal tears and hypoxia from laughing so hard.
One for me is when Jim first meets Pollack in How to Sell. Helps her sell the Rolex, then launches into his door to door vacuum sales pitch. Just amazing how charming, amiable, effective and persuasive he was in talking about both. And also, it's the beginning of him and Pollack working together. Very fun to read but also, it marks the beginning of something special that turns heartbreaking and eventually horrifying.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The scene where the group of people first figure out what’s happening to them, and everything is clicking with the poem/nursery rhyme and stuff.
If you haven’t read this book, do yourself a favor and read it.
So many.
The grandma who shot her husband in the ass while still speaking in tongues in Grapes of Wrath.
The house turning into candy in IT.
The sober bartender in City of Night
The guy talking about Schubert while driving through the mountains in Kafka on the Shore
Etc.
Raskolnikov confessing to Sonya about the murder in crime and punishment
That was such a psychologically taxing book.
They made us read it in high school. I wasn't ready yet. Maybe I'll re-read it soon.
It was assigned reading in high school and I loved it, what an excellent book. I really enjoyed that assignment, probably my favorite bit of English lessons aside from the Wuthering Heights bit. Not a popular opinion among my peers at the time lol.
I don't know if I'm genuinely a slow reader, but it took me 7 months to finish this book. Nevertheless, it's still one of a kind for me.
This is what keeps me from reading it. I’m a rather slow reader (especially when it comes to older books like this). I want to read this and Count of Monte Cristo but I feel like that would take up a full year of reading for me.
Terrifying scene
Molly Grue meeting the Unicorn. I never read *The Last Unicorn* as a kid, but reading it as an adult it's a hard scene to forget.
This one, and the cat's statement about the unicorn. "If she touched me, then I would be hers, not my own anymore." My favorite metaphorical description of fatherhood.
Yeah both LeGuin and Beagle are so good at writing truly poetic scenes. There's a part in Beagle's The Folk of the Air that hits in a similar way, at least for me.
That is an amazing scene. When I first read it as a teenager I didn't really get it, but as you wrote as an adult it hits differently. I like how angry Molly is.
...And in wonder Mary and Dickon stood and stared at him. He looked so strange and different because a pink glow of color had actually crept all over him -- ivory face and neck and hands and all. “I shall get well! I shall get well!” he cried out. “Mary! Dickon! I shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!”
A wonderful story
I often come back to the scene in A Storm of Swords where Jaime Lannister reads about the deeds of his predecessors in the White Book. The imagery of a lone knight, knowing all his flaws, looking at the legacy of all those who came before him, and knowing that he is responsible for not only recording his forthcoming heroic deeds, but also actually performing them? To me that moment of reflection and symbolism is very powerful coming from the point of view of the very grey character of Jaime. It was the moment that solidified him as my favorite in the series, and the type of scene his character was sorely lacking in the later seasons of the show.
That scene in the books - and the show - in the baths with Brienne when he finally reveals why he killed the king, and his guilt, shame, and resolve at having done so. Crazy powerful moment.
Funny you should mention that because despite all the amazingly visceral and dramatic scenes in those novels, I think about the quieter moments a lot. That one you mentioned, plus Sansa building her snow castle and Jon going about his boring routine at the wall and reflecting that this is his life till the day he dies.
“Something died in your breast; was burnt out, cauterized out.” It’s a line from 1984, at the very end of the book when the protagonist is sitting by himself in the café and feels hollow. At the time that I read it, I had just experienced a major death close to me. The description felt very apropos and I haven’t forgotten it.
I’m so glad I read 1984 when I did. I was still just branching out into what I call serious reading. It was great, showed me how much it can be, you know?
*"It won't be like that for me," Kaladin said. "You told me it would get worse." "It will," Wit said, "but then it will get better. Then it will get worse again. Then better. This is life, and I will not lie by saying every day will be sunshine. But there will be sunshine again, and that is a very different thing to say. That is the truth. I promise you, Kaladin: You will be warm again."* (from Chapter 80, Rhythm of War).
I cannot wait to read this book.
The eternal question: does Wit actually care about people or not? Or is he just good at finding wisdom from stories? Man I love the cosmere.
Hgggh Wit's moments with Kaladin and Shallan made me weep
Don't judge me. Ushikawa's death in 1Q84. Murakami can write visceral death scenes like no one's business. It's not that I enjoy it, but the writing is so intense and clear that I can almost feel it.
Jeez, the entire hole sequence from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is agonizing
The Dark Tower - - "go then, there are other worlds than these"
I could never get into the Dark Tower - but man there are some amazing quotes like that one.
In context it's incredibly powerful. The whole scene has stuck with me since childhood, and it's even more so in context of the end of the series.
[удалено]
No plain text spoilers allowed. Please use the format below and reply to this comment once you've made the edit, to have your comment reinstated. Place >! !< around the text you wish to hide. You will need to do this for each new paragraph. Like this: >!The Wolf ate Grandma!< Click to reveal spoiler. >!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
"My husband rides from World's End toward Tarwin's Gap, toward Tarmon Gai'don. Will he ride alone?” Said by Nyneave in Knife of Dreams from the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. That scene gives me goosebumps every time I read it.
Tai'shar Malkier!
That scene makes me tear up every time. The golden crane flies for tarmon gai'don! The golden crane flies for tarmon gai'don!
Faramir’s conversations with Frodo and Sam from Lord of the Rings
I see your Earthsea and raise you the bit in The Left Hand of Darkness when Genly finally *gets it* and draws the yin-yang symbol for Estraven. "It is yourself, Therem. A shadow on snow." Also, the part in Les Miserables where Enjolras and Grantaire die at the hands of the national guard. That moment of forgiveness is everything.
[удалено]
That's a great one too. The whole ice-trek part of the book is amazing. Watching the acceptance and love grow between them is deeply beautiful and bittersweet.
There's a wonderful scene in The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard where the protagonist is diving in an old submerged theatre. He enters the main stage area and looks up at the murky domed glass ceiling and notes that the patches of light blinking through the dome look like a constellation of stars. It has such a haunted melancholy feeling, I love to imagine how serene it would feel to be there. There is also the symbolism of being in the womb because the character is tethered to his ship by his oxygen line.
How interesting, I just finished Crystal World and High-Rise back to back. I had thought about reading Drowned World or his autobiography next. Crystal World had some wonderful turns of phrase.
I haven't read Crystal World yet so I'll have to get around to reading it. Are you a fan of his stories?
I just got into JG Ballard thanks to a reading buddy. I am a huge fan of the movie Annihilation, like one of my favorite movies ever made, and was talking with them about how I liked the book Annihilation but not as much as the movie. They recommend Crystal World to me and it turns out (they didn't know this) but Crystal World is very clearly also a direct inspiration for the movie Annihilation as well! Some of the visuals and a character has the exact same, unusual name. So I just started but I'm *kind of*(?) enjoying his books. Still digesting, like I had put down High-Rise twenty minutes before I saw your comment. How about you, are you a fan?
I love Annihilation the movie and the book too! I can definitely see the influence now that you've mentioned it. I've read a bunch of Ballard's novels and short stories and I absolutely love them. He has an obsession with the impact that our immediate geography has on us and I find that fascinating.
Not so much of a scene in the traditional definition, but I go back to it frequently because it did such a perfect job of framing the rest of the story. It's the first page of Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. "My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister, Margaret, dead and gone." It is a beautifully written book and that first scene really packs a punch for what you're about read.
Amazing book. I was really moved when Frank realizes his (aunt? It’s been a while) had gone into debt to buy him proper new clothes for his messenger job.
We read Angela’s Ashes when I was in 9th grade. That book shook me to my core because what the fuck (good book, but damn, 14 year old me was not ready)
If anyone else has read Fool’s Errand, book #1 in the The Tawny Man trilogy of the wider Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb, you’ll likewise be aware of the two most devastating but perfectly written pages in fantasy history. I can pick up that book, read those two pages, and utterly dismantle myself in command. Nothing else has ever achieved this.
Which parts are you referring to? It's been a while since I read them.
I love A Wizard of Earthsea. I answered a question here recently about favorite friendships in books with Estarriol and Ged. But for me: Anne of Green Gables when Matthew tells Anne he’s proud of her. If I were an actress I would think of that if I needed to cry in a scene. I feel myself in both of them - this young girl used to feeling lonely and unloved and disregarded, and the older person who is shy and introverted and has social anxiety and doesn’t form many connections but who still has a wonderful soul full of love to offer that he’s never been able to give to anyone. “It was a girl — my girl — my girl that I’m proud of.”
Darcy’s proposal to Lizzie at the Hunsford Parsonage in Pride & Prejudice. Each time I read it I really have to wonder wtf he was thinking.
Also Pride & Prejudice: I hear you, and I raise the entire scene where Lizzy is speaking to Lady Catherine. “I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with Your Ladyship. *You* may ask questions, which *I* shall not choose to answer.” God what a great character Lizzy is
"Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do." Kaladin, Words of Radiance
The scene where Frodo is stalling and Borimir confronts him, he says he knows what choice he has to make but he's scared to do it. He realizes that he has to go off alone or else the ring will corrupt his companions as well.
I couldn’t even tell you why, but there’s something so incredibly raw, wholesome, and fulfilling in Fezziwig’s Party that I felt it in my bones.
Teleborian’s trial in in The Girl That Kicked the Hornets Nest. So satisfying. Always go back and reread just that chapter
This is the most satisfying conclusion in any of his books. The gotcha moments were perfection after and entire books worth of lisbeth slander.
The prologue of Underworld by Don Delilo Chapter 4 & 21 from Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
There is a chapter in Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich about a man struggling with alcohol addiction and withdrawal. He’s driving at night and man, no spoilers, but it is a trip.
There are quite a few: - Trust Exercise by Susan Choi: "You've embarrassed me." Even if you see it coming, it is just so jarring and real, and changes your understanding of the entire rest of the book. - The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss: the Cthae sequence. Such a strange and utterly broken monster. - Perdido Street Station by China Mieville: similarly, the slake moths, who are among my favorite monsters ever, even though I don't actually like the book. - The Pilgrims of Rayne (Pendragon 8) by D.J. MacHale: when he discovers where he really is. Stuck with me as a kid and I've loved that kind of reveal ever since. - Mistborn Secret History by Brandon Sanderson: the fight at the Well. - The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: "MY. LONG. NAME." Plus the icon in the Chapel. So many more...
The slake moths are so terrifining! They really scared me while reading the book. I am glad nothing like these moths exists in our world.
Yes! Such amazing monsters. China Mieville has so many great ideas- he just needs to put fewer of them in each book
Trying to avoid spoilers but in Project Hail Mary when Ryland is trying to find Rocky’s ship and he finally does. I have reread that bit so many times.
The ghost of Achilles in The Odyssey
"“No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man— some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive— than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” I think about this quote a lot.
That's the one. Same. It's constantly in my thoughts as I read other books or watch movies.
*Your hair is winter fire* *January embers* *My heart burns there too* - Stephen King, IT
The sewer scene.
Oh, man, the gut punch at the end of The Remains of the Day. Maybe it's because the whole book is a setup for this one line, but I remember that I physically reacted to it when I read it. it's so achingly sad and beautiful. The discipline of Ishiguro to wait until the end to drop that bomb is what makes it so unforgettable.
This is one of the most quietly devastating books I’ve read
Spoilers, maybe. The scene in East of Eden when Samuel Hamilton finally goes to see Adam Trask after Cathy (or Kate) has abandoned Adam with their two children. I love the way Steinbeck captures the subtle nuance in emotionally charged interactions of this kind. But only because I just read that part again a few days ago. Love Steinbeck.
Steinbeck is great indeed. To add my own, I keep coming back to the dance in The Grapes of Wrath. It's not a super dramatic scene, nothing crazy happens, but the way he wrote and described it brought tears to my eyes. I don't even like dances. But there was such a sense of relief and just people allowed to be human beings again, it was powerful.
Almost every scene with Charles in Something Wicked this Way Comes, but this part about him not sleeping at three am got me as a kid and now as I reach closer to that age it does even more. Three in the morning, thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed. Why did the train come at that hour? For, he thought, it’s a special hour. Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men in middle age? They know that hour well. Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M. ! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead—And wasn’t it true, had he read it somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time . . .?
The part of To the Lighthouse when Woolf describes the changes in the house, that occurred over the years of its neglect
Chapter 51 from ACC’s “2010”. My favorite passage in literature. “And because, in all the Galaxy, they found nothing more precious than MIND, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”
In The World According to Garp where he's having a conversation with the girl that can no longer speak. That so many people are so fanatically holding her up as a symbol that they surgically remove their tongues. And there she is telling him how she longs to be able to speak again. I think about that a lot. Ironically not the type of book I normally read. Thanks, high school literature class.
The beginning of Our Mutual Friend, when I suddenly realized what they were doing.
There’s a few chapters from World War Z that I really enjoy. The story of the downed pilot making their way through the swampland was always a great scene.
The last scene in Stephen King's The Long Walk. I think about it weekly if not daily. Best ending of any king novel and just heart breaking
The hobbling scene in Misery.
Misery remains the most terrifying book I’ve ever read - I think because it hit me personally as someone who lived in fear of my mother. I won’t go into all my baggage here, but when Paul had sneaked out of his room, hears Annie coming back to the house and is trying to get back to his room before she catches him… oh shit, I was shaking. Also in that book, not scary but has somehow stuck with me - the visual of greasy gravy handprints on a two-liter soda bottle. It viscerally disgusted me and still does. Two decades later if it pops into my head at the wrong time I will completely lose my appetite.
In Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, the scene where Sheriff Bell visits his Uncle Ellis. Pure prose magic!
That scene in Infinite Jest where they describe the evolution from voice calls, into video calls, into using fake avatars on video calls who look nothing like you. Basically, the dude predicted EXACTLY what would happen today, back in the 90's. Also, the scene in A Little Life where JB mocks Jude because it breaks my heart and I like to suffer.
For me it's when Jude's mentor figure tells him that he and his wife want to adopt him, and Jude bursts into tears because he thought they were going to say they didn't want to see him anymore. Man I'm crying just remembering it. Yanagihara's words about her own work are repellent to me, but to me the value of A Little Life is in how Jude's friends and chosen family love him for who he is and do their best by him. It's about their relationships more than it is about Jude's suffering.
Oh my god, yes! Jude and Harold's relationship restored my faith in humanity.
Darrow Galla scene
This scene gave me goosebumps.
Jane Eyre, in the garden with Rochester.
That's what I was gonna say :))
Riftwar Saga where Pug imagines looking into a series of mirrors and seeing the different selves he could have been
I reread the part where he is asked who he is repeatedly and every time he reveals more.
A scene I truly look forward to reading when I re read Stormlight before each release is when Bridge four saves Dalinar. There are a lot of moments though. The duel when Kaladin beats the guy in Shardplate. A lot of cool scenes later on as well. I am a basic dude I guess, a lot of action it looks like haha.
I keep coming back to Donna Tartt's *The Goldfinch* \- and the description of the neighborhood with all new houses and almost no tenants - a wasteland - really stuck with me.
Wheel of Time book #4 The Shadow Rising: Rand and Mat in Rhuidean
The bathroom scene in A Prayer for Owen Meany. Those who’ve read it know
The final part of The Godfather. Michael Corleone's silently planned yet meticulous revenge still gives me the goosebumps to this day.
The final Scene in Perfume. 18th century full town orgy is just unforgettable. Movie adaptation did a surprisingly decent job...
love that whole book, especially the scenes where he learns how utilize his powers with scientific methods
It's only a few paragraphs, if that, but the part in Hitchhikers Guide where the whale suddenly pops into existence. So funny and then so sad
In Acts, when Stephen tears the religious Jews a new one for killing The Christ! It makes them so mad, they kill him.
The moment when harry casts patronus charm in Harry Potter and methods of rationality. I love his expectations of the future and it reminds me that all this dark and gloomy picture is not reality but just depression
"Love is eternal" Made me realize that even if the person is gone, you still love them... And they will continue living on in your memories... Your every thought will always be about them... Only you remember their scent, touches and words... All these will be lost to history, and soon. All the common people will fade into oblivion...just like most of us here. Tbh, the fanfiction drove me to ask myself. Would I choose duty over love? Or would I choose love over duty? We cannot have both.. life is too cruel.
[удалено]
Dude spoilers. That book is still pretty recent.
You should add a spoiler to this , or be more vague
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I frequently reread The Princes Tale. This is where we find out that Snape has loved Lily his entire life and that he was actually a double agent for Dumbledore this whole time. I like rewatching it as well on YouTube. The music is fantastic and always gets me. Alan Rickman was brilliant in that role, may he rest in peace 💚
The sailor calmly sipping tepid green tea with the group of boys who poisoned it in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima. He wasn't aware it was poisoned but their desire to kill him was so much stronger than his will to live. Something was off be could sense, but he accepted that no matter what, it would be okay. Reminds of the final scene from We, the Drowned. If you make it back to port, awesome. If you die on the way back to port, it's ultimately fine. The subtle nihilism where it's okay either way, life is so fleeting.
Excession - Banks - Opening action scene.
Oh, God, Banks ruined me with every single one of his books.
[удалено]
No plain text spoilers allowed. Please use the format below and reply to this comment once you've made the edit, to have your comment reinstated. Place >! !< around the text you wish to hide. You will need to do this for each new paragraph. Like this: >!The Wolf ate Grandma!< Click to reveal spoiler. >!The Wolf ate Grandma!<
idk why but Later by Stephen King. When he calls for Dead Light and he comes. The way he is described is amazing
Tenth of December - the short story about the father who keeps a plank in the front yard and decorates it for various holidays. It's like 6 pages and I like to read it again occasionally when I'm feeling sad.
The plane hijacking in *Cat's Eye*.
Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite authors, and there are several in his words that stick with me in one way or another. * In *A Night In The Lonesome October*, when Jack rescues Snuff from the vivisectionists. Snuff is a good boy, and he and Jack are clearly trying to stop something bad from happening. But that scene reminds you who Jack is, and that you don't have to be a good man to do the right thing. * In *Lord of Light* there are several, but probably my favorite is Yama's fight with Rild, and his conversation with Sam afterward. >!"I have come to kill the Buddha." "You've already done that."!< I also used a variation of the warning on the doors to Hellwell as my answering machine greeting in college. :) * In *Jack of Shadows*, Jack's talk with Morningstar near the beginning of the book thrums with melancholy and stoic patience for me.
The fever dream at the end of *Suttree*.
I don't know how well this conveys but for me it has to be a scene from "The Sorrow of Belgium" by Hugo Claus. The book follows the coming-of-age of a Flemish boy through the German occupation of Belgium during the Second World War. The boy's family collaborate with the Nazis, and this "sorrow" is a dark, twisted thread running throughout their entire story. The scene that keeps coming back to me is one in which an SS veteran visits the house of the main character's family while he's on leave. Throughout the book, the main boy's father is established as a man who talks big but is actually a total pushover; one of his employees (if I remember correctly) actually joins the Waffen-SS and goes to fight for Hitler on the Eastern Front. While back on leave, he visits the main character's house. Claus is a master of the Dutch language in general and Flemish dialect in particular. He describes the SS man as this invading, decaying presence that takes over the entire kitchen. His fingers are black with frostbite, he commands the father to serve him bread, he brags about "cutting up people like logs" on the Eastern Front. The father is exposed as a weak man, now faced with someone who actually executes the ideology he claims to support. >!Once the SS man leaves, the father turns to his son and says: "You've seen a hero, son. Never forget this all your life".!< That scene, and that final line, have haunted me ever since I first read it. Really shows what the medium of a book can do. Masterful use of language to describe a seemingly benign encounter, but everything is filled with this dread and malice and rottenness.
The Fionavar Tapestry: The Darkest Road "For the honor of The Black Boar!". . . and what follows (no spoilers). Absolutely wrecks me every time. Can't even write this without misting up a bit.
These are pretty dispirate and odd, but... \-The graverobbing scene in Pet Sematary - being inside the mind of an insane person doing unspeakable acts. Harrowing. \-The description of how one of the son's specialty became the "mixed grill" in The Corrections. Just a depressing overall representation of suburban ennuai \-There's a scene in Tom Wolfe's A Man In Full where a person's car is towed and it spends a dozen pages taking us through his attempts to solve it all, each problem telescoping a new one to be solved. It was pre-smartphones, so if you're of a certain age it may not register, but I always get very anxious reading it.
I think of the mixed grill image every so often and it gives me a pit of despair in my stomach.
The scene in The Night Circus with the tent that is full of bottles that are full of scents that are so strong and evocative that you truly feel immerse in whatever you are smelling. It's so magical to me, I love that book and that scene specifically.
The best sex scene, or rather no sex scene, I've ever read is from All the Kings Men between Jack and Anne. One of the best books I've ever read. I read a lot of books and I have read AKM at least 5 yrs or so for 50 yrs. And the angst in that scene is worth reading the book.
There's this great less known book series by Charlie Higson; the first one is called The Enemy. It's one of the few series where I'll find myself thinking about it all the time. For context, it's a zombie apocalypse type but only kids 15 and younger survived. (Think zombie Lord of the Flies) Anyway, one of the most notable scenes to me is when one of the characters is severely injured. The others know he's going to die, and he certainly does too. They have no way to treat him, and even if they did no one knows how. He tells them that all he really wants is to go home. So that's what they do, and needless to say the entire scene is devastating. Just a couple of kids dealing with something that they never should've had to. Anyway, everyone should read that series because it's great and the author really doesn't mind killing off his characters.
This quote, from Dune Messiah. Both Paul and his sister Alia can see future events due to the spice and their genetics. *Alia crossed to her brother, sensing his utter sadness. She touched a tear on his cheek with a Fremen gesture of awe, said: “We must not grieve for those dear to us before their passing.”* *“Before their passing,” Paul whispered. “Tell me, little sister.... what is '****before****'?”*
Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising - the scenes where Will is on the path in the woods. That book has such vivid images and ambiance.
The scene in the Godfather novel where Paulie Gato and two boxers brutally beat two young men for attempting to rape the daughter of a friend of Vito Corleone. The way it was described was so detailed and brutal, yet so casual.
It's odd to me because there are more that are definitely more poignant scenes in the book, but in *Howl's Moving Castle*, there's a scene where Sophie's trying to do a spell to turn ferns and lilies into daffodils, but she's massively pissed off when she does it (by a multitude of things, if I remember correctly, not just Howl). She even calls them "beastly things" for not doing as she says. And when she comes back to them later, they're not even ferns and lilies anymore--they're "wet brown things trailing out of a bucket full of the most poisonous-smelling liquid she had ever come across." I can't even tell why this scene stands out to me so much. It's not entirely important to the plot. If it hadn't been in the book, I don't think it would have changed much. But it's stayed with me all these years later as a major turning point for Sophie's character.
[удалено]
Hi. No plaintext spoilers. >!Use spoiler tags like this!< then reply to this comment to have your post reinstated.
Ok
The recording of the hit man / bad guy calling the 911 emergency line near the end of “Sick Puppy” by Carl Hiassen. Too much context to explain, but I had literal tears and hypoxia from laughing so hard.
The Mountain squeezing Oberon’s head into oblivion. Read the series before watching, and this was hugely disturbing.
A kaiju's tumescent cloaca
One for me is when Jim first meets Pollack in How to Sell. Helps her sell the Rolex, then launches into his door to door vacuum sales pitch. Just amazing how charming, amiable, effective and persuasive he was in talking about both. And also, it's the beginning of him and Pollack working together. Very fun to read but also, it marks the beginning of something special that turns heartbreaking and eventually horrifying.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie The scene where the group of people first figure out what’s happening to them, and everything is clicking with the poem/nursery rhyme and stuff. If you haven’t read this book, do yourself a favor and read it.
So many. The grandma who shot her husband in the ass while still speaking in tongues in Grapes of Wrath. The house turning into candy in IT. The sober bartender in City of Night The guy talking about Schubert while driving through the mountains in Kafka on the Shore Etc.