Used Books Blog

It’s time again for the Used Books Blog quotation contest. Last month’s contest was won by Chris Tozer of Cat’s Cradle Booksellers, who correctly identified a quote from Ghostwritten by David Mitchell.

This month I’ve plucked another quote from the ocean of literature available in hopes of keeping you up late racking your brains and thumbing through your bookshelf for the answer.

When she started kindergarten, he began to hang the sign on her door every morning, in the form of a single word. At first it was a game for her, to wake each morning with great excitement and see what waited on the door. Early on, the daily sign reflected his expectations and aspirations in the first words of English he had so resolutely taught himself upon his expatriation from Japan to the United States: EXCELLENT. AMBITIOUS. DETERMINED. SUCCESSFUL. Only as the years went by did the sign on the door monitor both her fall into trivial girlish adolescence and the commensurate, steady deterioration of his approval, branding her life with the ways she let him down: DISAPPOINTING. LAZY. SILLY. FAILURE.

Think you know? Simply leave a comment and identify the title and author of the quote. Thanks for playing and good luck!

One of my favorite jobs at Alibris was running the Quote Contest. I miss it! I read a book and I see a quote and think, that’s a good one. Then I wonder if it’s easily found on the Internet, which is a real trick these days.

Now that I’m blogging I figure why not start up my own Quote Contest. I’m not offering a monetary award, only public acknowledgment and your own personal gratification that you were the first to figure out the quote. So, here it goes, the first edition of the Used Books Blog Quote Contest. Read the following passage and you could be the winner.

“I grew up when I realized that everywhere was basically the same, and so were the women.”

Think you know? Simply leave a comment and identify the title and author of the quote. Thanks for playing and good luck!