BOOK: THE SEQUEL
First Lines from the Classics of the Future by Inventive Impostors
After the last page is turned and the cover closed on a great book, is it really over? Ever wonder what happens to Harry Potter after, say, twenty years of marriage and a steady government gig? Or what Karl Marx would say about today’s financial crisis? What did Scarlett O-Hara really think about tomorrow? What comes after ever-after? BOOK: The Sequel dares to answer these burning questions with imagined first sentences from would-be follow-ups to classics from The Bible to Lord of the Rings, and from Green Eggs to Hamlet.
After the last page is turned and the cover closed on a great book, is it really over? Ever wonder what happens to Harry Potter after, say, twenty years of marriage and a steady government gig? Or what Karl Marx would say about today’s financial crisis? What did Scarlett O-Hara really think about tomorrow? What comes after ever-after? BOOK: The Sequel dares to answer these burning questions with imagined first sentences from would-be follow-ups to classics from The Bible to Lord of the Rings, and from Green Eggs to Hamlet. A delicious and unexpected return engagement from favorite characters like Jane Eyre, Ebenezer Scrooge, Jay Gatsby, Holden Caulfield, Wilbur the Pig, and Captain Ahab, BOOK: The Sequel is a perfect gift for book lovers everywhere, or anyone to whom The End is simply the starting point for their imagination.
- PublicAffairs
- Paperback
- May 2009
- 144 Pages
- 9780786747818
Buy the Book
$15.00
About Clive Priddle, Editor
Contributors (Imposters) Book lovers from around the world have impersonated their favorite authors and submitted sequels. We thank them all for their enthusiastic support!
Clive Priddle is Executive Editor and VP of PublicAffairs. Clive Priddle was until May 2003 publishing director of Fourth Estate, a division of HarperCollins. Since joining PublicAffairs, the authors he has edited include Linda Robinson, Natan Sharansky, Kishore Mahbubani, John Kerry, David Rothkopf, Richard Haass, and Muhammad Yunus. He worked for Fourth Estate in the UK since 1992, where among the authors he acquired were Sebastian Junger, Laura Hillenbrand, David Ewing Duncan, James Naughtie, Francis Wheen, Geraldine Brooks, Oliver Morton, Eric Larson, and Michela Wrong. He previously worked for four years at Penguin UK. He won the Tony Godwin award in 2001. Born in London, a graduate of Cambridge University, Clive lives with his wife and two sons in northern Manhattan.
Geoffrey Nunberg is a linguist who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley and is the former chair of the American Heritage Dictionary’s Usage Panel. His commentaries on language and politics have appeared regularly in the Sunday New York Times and on NPR‘s “Fresh Air.” A winner of the Linguistic Society of America’s Language and the Public Interest Award in 2001 and the author of Going Nucular, Talking Right, and The Way We Talk Now, and – most recently – The Years of Talking Dangerously. Nunberg lives in San Francisco, California.
Discussion Questions
Which quote was your favorite and why?
What books should be “left alone” (i.e. are too sacred—in your estimation—to adapt)?
Some sequels begin at the end of the original; some are re-imaginations of the original book. What part of a book has more impact to you: the beginning or the end?
Is sequel-writing a good idea?
What “real” sequels do you wish had never been written?
Which sequel caused you to read or want to re-read the original again?
Which book was not represented in this project that you’d like to see sequelled?
What was the last book you read in book club? What would be the first sentence of the sequel to that book?
Is there a book you were forced to read at some point that you’d like to revise in a sequel?
Do you think more of these sequels were written in love or anger?
Are you the kind of person who can read the sequel without reading the original?
The most sequelled books in Book: The Sequel were
a. The Bible
b. Moby Dick
c. Pride and Prejudice
d. A Tale of Two Cities
e. The Great Gatsby
f. Metamorphosis
g. Harry Potter
h. Gone With the Wind
i. Jane Eyre
j 1984
What do these books have in common that made their sequels so easily re-imagined?