Frankly, My Dear, I Did Give A Damn

Image by ...Rachel J... via Flickr

As part of  the build-up to their participation in this past week’s bookfair at the Jacob Javitts Center in NY, Perseus Books Group invited people to submit ideas for imaginary sequels to their favorite books — title and opening line — offering these suggestions as examples:

See, I was right. —From Das Kapital 2 (sequel to Das Kapital by Karl Marx)

HappyMeals are all alike; each unhappy meal is unhappy in its own way. —From Anna McKarenina (sequel to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy)

Bob Marley was dead, to begin with. —From Kwanzaa Tunes (sequel to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)

All animals are equal, except those with swine flu. —From Mexican Animal Farm (sequel to Animal Farm by George Orwell)

While entries for the forthcoming anthology based on those responses closed today, new ones will continue to appear online at Book: The Sequel. Entries range from a sequel to Katharine Hepburn’s biography called Me, Again, in which she explains why she wore pants to heaven, to a Gone With the Wind addendum called Came With the Wine, in which Rhett revises his ill-chosen remarks of the actual novel.

“So much better than a gimmick,” say the Twitterers and Facebookites.  And I have to say I agree.  It’s one of my favorite write-ins since David Rose collected and published They Call me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from the London Review of Books.    And if you missed that oeuvre, take a look at bn.com or some such for gems like “”Lanolin-sensitive Cumbrian chick … Outside all calico, inside pure wool…” or “Eco-friendly bio-diverse M (29) … smells a bit like soil and eats too much soup.”

via BOOK: The Sequel.