As many of you know, I offered an Act of Whimsy for the fundraiser to help Jay Lake. My offering was to read beloved classics as though they were phone sex. You may make a suggestion in the comments below IF YOU DONATED. Only one suggestion per comment please. List title and authors only, please.
I’ll then use a random number generator to pick one to add to my selection.
If you’re very naughty, I might pick two.
EDITED TO ADD: You guys had great suggestions and I’m going to go ahead and roll the dice so I can record this bit of whimsy. Thank you!
Moby Dick, of course.
Perhaps just Chapter 94, “A Squeeze of the Hand”: “It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! no wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize.”
Then again, I’m not sure that chapter needs any help.
Beowulf
Goodnight Moon…
Perhaps not a classic, but I am cracking up just thinking about it.
I think you should read from either The Phantom Tollbooth or Where the Wild Things Are.
They are so classics!
Doyle, “The Final Problem,” mostly for the beginning of the second paragraph. (Or any other suitably homoerotic Holmes stories.)
Idylls of the King or…Chaucer. Oh, Chaucer in OLDE ENGLISH!
Beth took mine, because she’s evil like that! I shall say Ulysses, James Joyce.
I came here with my own suggestion, then saw Goodnight Moon above and just about choked laughing. So… That.
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
The Canterbury Tales.
oooh…I should have asked for The Nun’s Priest Tale from Chaucer….!
Poe’s The Raven, or maybe a bit from Winnie-the-Pooh
Does the Gettysburg Address count as a classic? (My original suggestion was going to be Jabberwocky, but someone beat me to it.)
Fold a Banana or Throw a Tomato. Bwah hah hah hah {cough}
The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
Wuthering Heights
A Tale of Two Cities. This is about the only way the beginning of that book could POSSIBLY be interesting.
Little Women
Something from Jane Austen, I’m thinking.
Huckleberry Finn
Winnie the Pooh.
Because of reasons.
As much as Good Night Moon or The Very Hungry Caterpillar would be hilarious, I have small kids, and if I continually laugh while reading those books I’ll eventually have to explain what’s so funny…
Treasure Island or Three Musketeers…just don’t start at the beginning. 😉
Have to consider Of Human Bondage by Maugham. =P
The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar
I vote for Henry V – the speech at Agincourt – we few, we lucky few…
Dhalgren’s first page.
YEah… Dhalgren.
Chris
Something…Hemingway. So inappropriate!