Can You Really Have Too Many Page 42 Contests?

After Kerry’s extraordinarily enjoyable post about page 42s, and my propensity for blank pages, I started going through my library looking at the forty-second page of lots of books. Which got me thinking. How cool would it be to have a contest where you have to guess the book based solely on a single clue and a quote from page 42? Okay, maybe not so exciting to everyone. But to fellow bibliophiles—read geeks—way cool. So here they are. I will send something cool to the first person who can guess all of the titles. And no, it won’t be a kitten.

Hint—I am just as wide ranging in my reading genres as I am in my writing genres.

Second Hint—These are all national titles.

Third Hint—They are all books by well known authors.

Good luck!


1) Funny we should start with this first.
“I noticed you eating all alone. Every launch has one like that. Kid that nobody takes to right away. Sometimes I think the teachers do it on purpose. The teachers aren’t very nice. You’ll notice that.”

2) Shortest title of all time?
Only Stanley had seemed sure of himself, confident of the future, unconcerned with the pitfalls their parents saw strewn all around “the kids.” And in the end it was his confidence rather than their fears which had been justified.

3) This is a sad one
He went to work then, trailing and treeing the squirrels that little Arlis was scaring up off the ground.

4) You have to like an author who goes by three initials before his last name.
Very puffed up he was, when he got to Bywater just on the stroke of eleven, and found he had come without a pocket handkerchief!

5) You would too if you had to carry that
She jingled the bracelet, making it sparkle under the light. “Henry it’s perfectly wonderful! What originality! I shall be the sensation of New York, wearing the same stuff as bridge girders, truck motors, kitchen stoves, typewriters, and—what was it you were saying about it the other day darling?—Soup kettles?

6) This author was such a little _______?
As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger.

7) This started it all
“They’ll take the boy and go. There’ll be no hanging around. That’s if they’re coming at all. Probably mistaken the day. I daresay their kind don’t set much store with punctuality. Either that or they drive some tin pot car that’s broken d-AAAAAAAARRRRRGH!”


8) How many chick flicks have they made out of this?
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

9) A man and a mouse
April 21st—I figured out a new way to set up the mixing machines in the bakery to speed up production. Mr. Donner says he will save labor costs and increase profits. He gave me a fifty dollar bonus and a ten dollar a week raise.

10) When your watch gets really old you might have this
“She’d be delighted. Mother’s all right. She’s not one of us. But she’s all right”

11) I’m sure these make lousy raisins
In the open doors the women stood looking out, and behind them the children—corn-headed children with wide eyes, one bare foot on top of the other bare foot, and their toes working. The women and children watched their men talking to the owner men. They were silent.

12) It’s alive!
I replied carelessly and, partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchemists as the principal authors I had studied. The professor stared. “Have you,” he said, “really spent your time in studying such nonsense?”

13) Wait, who am I?
The passport in question was, naturally one of the most difficult in the world to tamper with, but with great care, equipment, and artistry, it could be done.

“How much?”

“These skills—and equipment—do not come cheap. Twenty-five hundred francs.”

14) Who would kill a bunch of perfectly good letters?
Madness, Hastings, is a terrible thing . . . I am afraid . . . I am very much afraid . . ."

15) That’s one heck of a night crawler
“CHOAM controls the spice,” Paul said.

16) Dream on!
Now being prepared for almost anything, he was not prepared by any means for nothing; and, consequently, when the bell struck one, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling.

17) Where ghosts pay to drive
"Our job," said the count, "is to see that all the words sold are proper ones, for it wouldn't do to sell someone a word that had no meaning or didn't exist at all."