SIP meme...

[dwenius]

What with being late to the game and all, and several of my choices being used already, and the general unavailability of SIPs for more than half of the books I would have put on the list, this took a really long time.
As seems to be customary, I have removed a few SIPS that are dead giveaways.

1. lock thirteen, catapult head, ballistic radars, grain barges, parking orbit Edit: Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, guessed by fredfred


2. unitive knowledge, physiological intelligence, alert passivity, voluntary ignorance, holy indifference, spiritual reformers, separate selfhood, physical austerities, animal grace, complete deliverance, human grace, mental prayer ***


3. tormented writer, productive writer, gathering shadow


4. solar parallax **


5. masked beauty, crocodile valise, hypnotic green eyes, third prophecy, neutral angels, blue nude Edit: Tom Robbin's Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, guessed by skronk


6. southern pansy, ineffable plan, plant mister Edit: Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens, guessed by 2wanda


7. man with red eyes ***


8. fifth savior, time dysfunction, psych tech, astral determinism, immortal man, creator deity, healthy twin


9. cannot fpeake, anon fir, hall haue, thy felfe, haue feene, cuery thing, heauen knowes, pray heauen, haue fworne, haue loft, fer downe, halt haue, thy fclfe, cannot choofe, haue married, plague vpon, haue paid, fpeake truth, ile proue, cuery man, hall hue, neuer faw, eucry one, hall pleafe, marry fir *


10. eleventh volume, forking paths Edit: Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones, guessed by ronebofh with an assist by fredfred

* Easy now, precision is important here
** Not as difficult as it seems.
*** Fiendishly difficult, I'm afraid

Comments

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

Number six is Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett!

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Right! One of the SIPs was "accurate prophecies"...bit of a giveaway :)

[2wanda.livejournal.com]

I just chuckled every time they used the word "ineffable" in that book. To me, that was the dead giveaway.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Hah! I was going to just put "plant mister" and see if any one got it, but I figured I had enough hard ones on the list already!

[fredfred.livejournal.com]

1. is Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Whee!

Is 8 from the Invisibles?

10. Borges or Gaiman? ;)

I shall muse on the others.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

1. Correct! I should have removed grain barges :)
8. not from the Invisibles (or any graphic novel, as they don't tend to have SIPs, sadly), but very similar thereunto, and IIRC, quoted in Invisibles.
10. Yes, it is one of those two :)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

10 must be Borges's "Ficciones", then.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Yep!

[megasus4.livejournal.com]

What is an SIP? I have not seen this meme before.

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

"Statistically Improbable Phrases", a feature of the Amazon interface for certain books. They are scanning books for the "look inside" feature, and therefore have a big database of text. They do some analysis, and can pull out that one unique phrase that only appears in that one book, etc.

The meme is to look up SIPs for favorite books (many don't have any, as the system is new and incomplete) and let your Flist try to guess the book title from the phrases. Use of google or amazon is discouraged :)

[skronk.livejournal.com]

5. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates - Tom Robbins

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Correct! and how awesome is that book, anyway? It might be my favorite of his, with only Skinny Legs and All providing true competition.

Shakes spear

[(Anonymous)]

#9 is the sad result of transliterating Shakespeare's English into the meager 7 bits of ASCII encoding.

W. W. Norton & Co., "The First Folio of Shakespeare"

[(Anonymous)]

"Solar Parallax" -> "Mason & Dixon", by Pynchon.