main
side
curve
  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Your favorite book scenes (and why)

Discussion in 'Archive: The Amphitheatre' started by KnightWriter, Mar 24, 2003.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. The_Ultimate_Fett

    The_Ultimate_Fett Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2002
    That point in A Clockwork Orange where Alex is getting tortured. It just gave me the chills.

    I also loved the scene in ROTK with The Witch King and Eowyn. The entire chapter (Battle of the Pelennor Fields) was great. Very well written.
     
  2. Jedi_Hood

    Jedi_Hood Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 10, 2000
    For those of you quoting scenes from Rainbow Six, I think the section where Popov figures out what's really going on is great.

    It is a rare Clancy book that doesn't have a great nail-biter somewhere in it. Unfortunately, especially with his later books, you have to wade though thousands of pages to get to them. :(
     
  3. Jansons_Funny_Twin

    Jansons_Funny_Twin Jedi Knight star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2002
    For those of you quoting scenes from Rainbow Six, I think the section where Popov figures out what's really going on is great.

    Oh yeah, loved that scene. Loved how he played the "Oh, so sad what's happening to the environment" role to get info. And the when he gets the whole picture and escapes.

    Only thing about that book I didn't like was the last fight in South America. I felt like the members of Rainbow did, that it was closer to murder than to combat.

    CT Special Forces > Scientists




    Anata Baka?!
     
  4. Jedi_Hood

    Jedi_Hood Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 10, 2000
    Only thing about that book I didn't like was the last fight in South America.

    I thought it was rather anti-climatic myself.

    I felt like the members of Rainbow did, that it was closer to murder than to combat.

    Are you referring to the gunfight, or to afterwards, when Clark and his people exiled the others into the jungle?
     
  5. Kathryn

    Kathryn Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 1, 2002
    Has anyone here read "In pursuit of the proper sinner" by Elizabeth George. I love her series, and if I had to pick, it would be "In pursuit" (the 12th of 14 books, I think) that's my favourite and mainly because of my favourite scene ever. OK, since it is the 12th book, this is gonna take a bit of explaining; George writes police procedurals set in modern day London, Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers are her main protagonists, partners, cops in the Met's CID. (Criminal Investigations). They are night and day - Tommy being an aristocrat, brooding and erudite, gentle, and Barb a true working class girl, opiniated, and a bit foulmouthed. And she hates Lynely's guts. But they are paired together by their superior in a "Great Deliverance", George's first novel. And he manages to get through to her, and past the chip on her shoulder and they go on to establish a successful working relationship based on their complimentary strengths. I know what you might be thinking at this point, and now they don't eventually jump into bed, but they do become fast friends. Lynley can't imagine his life without Havers in it, and Havers gives Lynley her respect, her admiration and her trust, things she doesn't give easily, but are for life once she does, she's that kind of a loyal person.
    By "in pursuit" they've worked a good four years together, and weathered a good deal, too. But this novel challenges their bond as never before, and that is mostly because of what's happened in the book directly previous, "Deception on his mind." Barbara is off on medical leave after a nasty encounter with the perpatrator during her last case, and is getting to that antsy oint of recovery, not well enough to go back to regular duties, but well enough to get a bit of cabin fever. As well, she's geuinely concerned about her neighbours- Taymullah Azhar a microbiology professor and his chld, 8 year old Hadiyyah-when she finds out that they're off to the seaside (Balford, a little town in Essex, England) to help out Azhar's family who have been caught up in a murder. And Barb decides to follow them, and becomes involved in the case in an unoffical way. She learns that this involvement comes with a very high price. For when their suspect takes the little girl Hadiyyah hostage, Barbara is forced to make a difficult choice between her reputation her future, her duty, responsibilty as an officer,her career, all of that, and Hadiyyah's safety.
    "deception" ends with just that decision, and then "In pursuit" it's three months later, Barbara is still on suspension pending the outcome of a professional review. (having narrowly escaped criminal charges) She's hiding the painful truth of the situation from Azhar, not wanting to wound him. One morning she gets the call to come in back to work at New Scotland Yard. She gets reamed out by the Commissioner, a speech that borders on abuse. she gets a disciplinary letter in her file. A demotion to Constable (though still in CID) And she knows it might have been a lot worse. She thinks she knows who it is who's interceded for her, her friend Lynley. So it is rather a shock when he admits that it wasn't him who pulled the strings and pulled in favours and negociated to save her job.That he'd tried-spent three months trying to understand, to see that incident in Essex through her eyes, but he had not found justification for the wrongs she'd committed against the law, even, but also against some of the most important tenets of their professional code of conduct. But what comes as a slap in the face is that there's a new case-one that would see Lynley personally involved as Havers so recently was-across the Inspector's desk and that he didn't want to work with her (let the dust settle a bit being the excuse) that he had chosen another partner. It's a surprising but not entirely unexpected moment, we-like Havers-don't anticipate Lynley so definitely turning away from Barbara when she needs him, after four years of being her friend and partner and we know that he'd probably be the first to make exactly the same cho
     
  6. anakin_girl

    anakin_girl Jedi Knight star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 8, 2000
    In Jane Eyre, the scene where Jane finds Mr. Rochester's insane wife locked in the attic. Jane comes to a lot of understandings in that scene.

    In Gone With the Wind, the "With God as my witness, I'll never be hungry again," scene...I loved Scarlett's drive and determination brought about by hardship.

    In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the scene in Dumbledore's office at the end of the book, in which Harry is throwing a temper tantrum and breaking Dumbledore's things. ("By all means, continue destroying my possessions. I have too many." [face_laugh] ) Then when Harry screams, "I WANT OUT! I DON'T CARE!" And Dumbledore says, "You do care. You care so much you fear you will bleed to death with the pain of it." I cried.
     
  7. Jedi_Hood

    Jedi_Hood Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 10, 2000
    In Jane Eyre, the scene where Jane finds Mr. Rochester's insane wife locked in the attic.

    I remember seeing the movie, and that scene was very creepy. Maybe I should read the book.
     
  8. NaboosPrincess

    NaboosPrincess Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 14, 2001
    Jane Eyre is a very good book; I would recommend it. :)

    The one book moment that has really stuck with me ever since I read it years ago is from Ella Enchanted, where Ella and Prince Charmont are sliding down the stair rail after her father's wedding. It's just a really funny, cute scene. A lot of the scenes in that book are, but I remember that one the best.
     
  9. KnightWriter

    KnightWriter Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 6, 2001
    I've got a scene or few to add soon.

    Anyone else want to contribute?
     
  10. a pop culture reference

    a pop culture reference Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    May 14, 1999
    Having just read The Great Gatsby, Gatsby's vigil over Daisy after the car wreck sticks out. Just knowing he was willing to sacrifice everything for a woman he KNEW didn't love him was chilling.
     
  11. KnightWriter

    KnightWriter Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 6, 2001
    This is perhaps my favorite passage in any book. It's from Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Steven Chbosky.

    After the dance, we left in Sam's pickup. Patrick was driving this time. As we were approaching the Fort Pitt Tunnel, Sam asked Patrick to pull on the side of the road. I didn't know what was going on. Sam then clibmed in the back of the pickup, wearing nothing but her dance dress. She told Patrick to drive, and he got this smile on his face. I guess they had done this before.

    Anyway, Patrick started driving really fast, and just before we got to the tunnel, Sam stood up, and the wind turned her dress into ocean waves. When we hit the tunnel, all the sound got scooped into a vacuum, and it was replaced by a song on the tape player. A beautiful song called "Landslide." When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings, and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down on started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing.

    And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.


    Classic.
     
  12. a pop culture reference

    a pop culture reference Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    May 14, 1999
    Great book, KW. GREAT book.
     
  13. Arwen-Jade_Kenobi

    Arwen-Jade_Kenobi Jedi Knight star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 9, 2002
    The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: The last chapter ("The Choices of Master Samwise") I would have loved to see that whole conflict filmed, that is one of the stand-out moments of the trilogy, as well as from any book I've read.

    Carrie The whole Prom Scene and the devestation from then on. I read this novel when I was a tormented twelve year old. That whole scene stayed with me more so for the fact that there would be a day of reckoning for me. It's still with me today even though things are much better.

     
  14. JediTrilobite

    JediTrilobite Jedi Grand Master star 7

    Registered:
    Nov 17, 1999
    Hm... I've got a lot.

    One is when Gandalf was facing the Balrog in Fellowship of the Ring, down in Moria. That's just one of the coolest scenes that I've ever read.

    Another was the first scenes in Mars, by Ben Bova. The mission has just landed on the planet, and there's quite a bit of technology and procedure talk, but you get the feeling that they accomplished something, without really knowing what. It also throws you into the book.
     
  15. Soontir-Fel

    Soontir-Fel Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 18, 2001
    I love the scene in the Gunslinger when Roland is forced to kill everyone in the town. I just love imagining the sounds of those revolvers.
     
  16. audio_karate

    audio_karate Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 23, 2001
    From Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, English translation by William Weaver:

    Marco Polo imagined answering (or Kublai Khan imagined his answer) that the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there; and he retraced the stages of his journeys, and he came to know the port from which he had set sail, and the familiar places of his youth, and the surroundings of home, and a little square of Venice where he gamboled as a child.

    At this point Kublai Khan interrupted him or imagined interrupting him, or Marco Polo imagined himself interrupted, with a question such as: ?You advance always with your head turned back?? or ?Is what you see always behind you?? or rather, ?Does your journey take place only in the past??

    All this so that Marco Polo could explain or imagine explaining or be imagined explaining or succeed finally in explaining to himself that what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advance on his journey, because the traveler?s past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

    (Memory and travel are illusory and grounding, both.)
    ...Then Marco Polo spoke: ?Your chessboard, sire, is inlaid with two woods: ebony and maple. The square on which your enlightened gaze is fixed was cut from the ring of a trunk that grew in a year of drought: you see how its fibers are arranged? Here a barely hinted knot can be made out: a bud tried to burgeon on a premature spring day, but the night?s frost forced it to desist.?

    Until then the Great Khan had not realized that the foreigner knew how to express himself fluently in his language, but it was not this fluency that amazed him.

    ?Here is a thicker pore: perhaps it was a larvum?s nest; not a woodworm, because, once born, it would have begun to dig, but a caterpillar that gnawed the leaves and was the cause of the tree?s being chosen for chipping down . . . This edge was scored by the wood carver with his gouge so that it would adhere to the next square, more protruding . . . .?

    The quantity of things that could be read in a little piece of smooth and empty wood overwhelmed Kublai; Polo was already talking about ebony forests, about rafts laden with logs that come down the rivers, of docks, of women at the windows . . . .

    (Entire worlds can be found in the smallest details. Also, the language, the imagery is lovely. I am mad for all the Neruda/Borges/Calvino/Rilke/Brodsky/etc. conjuring of alchemy and vanished alphabets & forgotten tongues and lost cities and old men and black coffee and terrifying angels and wood.)



    From Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince:

    ?My life is very monotonous,? he [the fox] said. ?I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat. . .?

    ...

    So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near?
     
  17. Darth-Seldon

    Darth-Seldon Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    May 17, 2003
    At the end of both Prelude to Foundation and Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov when Daneel reveals who he is and what he is.

    At the end of Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov in the chapter titled ALONE.

    In 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke when HAL goes crazy and tries to kill them all.

    -Seldon
     
  18. DVader316

    DVader316 Jedi Knight star 7

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2000
    One scene that always all stood out for me was the climactic scene of The Stand by Stephen King, when Randall Flagg is about to execute Larry and Ralph but they are saved by the literal Hand of God before he can kill them. Larry realizes what it is and accepts his death, saying, "Oh, God, oh thank God... I will fear no evil, I will fear no evil, I will f--".


    To me I dont know what was more powerful, the fact that Larry and Ralph accept their deaths, or the fact that Larry dies in mid-thought. I thought that that was a great touch and was one of the reasons why its stuck with me all of these years.
     
  19. Darth-Kevin-Thomas

    Darth-Kevin-Thomas Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2002
    There are a few that i can't think of but i'll try a few.

    Fellowship of the ring The end of FOTR had me hooked. It was 2 am when i was done and it was so intense that i picked up the second and started reading that.

    SphereAlthough its not crictons best book, Normans talk about what aliens would be if we saw them really creeped me out. And the convorsations with "Jerry" really had me on the edge of my seat.

    I, Robot I really like the story "Robbie" for some reason it was one of my favorites. I liked it so much i read it again after i was done.

    American Gods To many to mention. Gaiman's style is very unique and each sceene has its own signature.



     
  20. Darth-Seldon

    Darth-Seldon Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    May 17, 2003
    My favorite short story of all time is
    from I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
    a story called "Reason" where a robot on a space station has a logic without flaws which is quite wrong.

    -Seldon
     
  21. Darth-Kevin-Thomas

    Darth-Kevin-Thomas Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2002
    Seldon

    I have to say that "reason" takes a close second. That story is fantastic and it really gets you thinking.

    YAHOO FOR ROBOTS
     
  22. DarthSil

    DarthSil Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 2003
    When Winston reads the "I love you" note in Orwell's 1984. A beautiful moment in an ugly story.
     
  23. Laura_Anu

    Laura_Anu Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 27, 2002
    I love the scene in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen when Elizabeth Bennet totally rips apart Mr. Darcy. If you haven't read the book (unless you don't want to) don't read any further.

    When she tells him (in essence) that if he was the last man on earth she wouldn't marry him, I just wanted to clap and scream "You go, girl!" Of course, soon afterwards the book tells you his side of the story, and then it made me feel bad for him...that's the great thing about that scene. It was just so awesome.
     
  24. Darth-Seldon

    Darth-Seldon Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    May 17, 2003
    Any scene from the Catcher in the Rye where Holden is thinking about the world and the phonies.
     
  25. Darth_Suzi

    Darth_Suzi Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 23, 2004
    Seems to be a lot of LotR on here... :)

    Okay, I've got two scenes that are about equal.

    First, Gollum's schizophrenic (sp?) scene in LotR. (Page 618-619 in the one-volume edition) I remember the first time I read that, I was jumping up and down in my dad's lap (Hey--I was eight. He was reading it to me.). I asked him again and again who "she" was and he wouldn't tell me. Anyways, I think it's one of the most thrilling scenes in the whole trilogy, and it has incredible foreshadowing--it builds up the anticipation like no other scene.

    My other favorite is from Nemesis, by Isaac Asimov, when Marlene first steps out onto the harsh world of Erythro, because the whole time, you're terrified that she's going to catch the plague, and then at the end, she thinks she has it, and that doesn't get resolved for a few chapters. It's amazingly thrilling.

    You know, looking at the two scenes I chose, I think I just have a preoccupation with schizophrenia. Weird.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.