dodont | (no subject)

You still mostly suck, so here's some more clues.

I've picked a bunch of books off my bookshelf, and chosen arbitrary passages from each of them. Can you figure what book each passage comes from?

1. What is it like for Mr. T-------? Superficially, he comes over as an ebullient comic. People say 'He's a riot.' And there is much that is farcical in such a situation, which might form the basis for a comic novel. It is comic, but not just comic - it is terrible as well. For here is a man who, in some sense, is desperate, in a frenzy. The world keeps disappearing, losing meaning, vanishing - and he must seek meaning, make meaning, in a desperate way, continually inventing, throwing bridges of meaning over abysses of meaninglessness, the chaos that yawns continually beneath him.
Publication date: 1970
Nationality of author: English

2. But there is no unique hierarchy by which the books in a library must be arranged. A different librarian might choose to organise the same collection of books in a different, but still hierarchical, way. He might not, for instance, have a separate foreign-language wing, but might prefer to house books, regardless of language, in their appropriate subject areas: German biology books in the biology section, German history books in the history section, and so on. A third librarian might adopt the radical policy of housing all books, on whatever subject, in chronological order of publication, relying on card indexes (or computer equivalents) to find books on desired topics.
Publication date: 1986
Nationality of author: English
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, got by Mark

3. Conservation is not simply about protection. It is about the reallocation of resources and the restructuring of local institutions. If conservationists understand that they cannot save precious forests by exluding people and that, like it or not, they must work with people to achieve their goals, then much more progress will be made. It is not enough to pour money into an effort to protect the Sumatran tiger. Conservation implies a struggle over resources, and struggles over resources are simultaneously struggles over the meaning of those resources and over the identities of the people who depend on them.
Publication date: 2002
Nationality of authors: American

4. "'So henceforth let no one who doesn't want to make a gaff say to a militiaman as he sees him off to the war: "Stevie, look after the pot of wine," meaning, of course, his head. Instead he must say "Stevie, look after the pot of milk," that is to say his testicles, in the name of all the devils in hell. When a man loses his head, only the individual perishes; but if the balls were lost, the whole human race would die out. It was this that moved the gallant Galen in his first book, On the Sperm, to conclude boldly that it would be better - that is to say less bad - to have no heart than to have no genitories.
Publication date: 1542
Nationality of author: French

5. At the end of the driveway my father knelt. B--- watched it and it was kind of pretty for a second, him just kneeling there in the grey winter window. Then she knew. He had been falling. In the kitchen, the shower. She ran and flung open the door, threw the screen wide and ran to him.
A Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, got by Katie, published 2000, American author

6. In this province live huge snakes and serpents of such a size that no one could help being amazed even to hear of them. They are loathsome creatures to behold. Let me tell you just how big they are. You may take it for a fact that there are some of them ten paces in lengththat are as thick as a stout cask: for their girth runs to about ten palms. These are the biggest. They have two squat legs in front near the head, which have no feet but simply three claws, two small and one bigger, like the claws of a falcon or a lion. They have enormous heads and eyes so bulging that they are bigger than loaves. Their mouth is big enough to swallow a man at one gulp. Their teeth are huge. All in all, the monsters are of such inordinate bulk and ferocity that there is neither man nor beast but goes in fear of them. There are also smaller ones, not exceeding eight paces in length, or six or it may be five.
Publication date: 1298
Nationality of author: Italian

7. He was not able to prove his own worth completely, he was not able to relieve the authorities of all work; responsiblity for this ultimate defect lay with whoever had denied him the remainder of the requisite strength. His eyes fell on the top storey of the house at the edge of the quarry. The casement window flew open like a light flashing on; a human figure, faint and insubstantial at that distance and height, forced itself far out and stretched its arms out even further. Who was it? A friend? A good man? One who sympathised? One who wanted to help? Was it one person? Was it everybody? Was there still help? Were there objections which had been forgotten? Certainly there were. Logic is of course unshakeable, but it cannot hold out against a man who wants to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread his fingers wide.
Publication date: 1925
Nationality of author: Czech
The Trial by Franz Kafka, got by Broonie

8. The mind thus turned in upon itself, and constantly occupied with a haunting anxiety which it dared not reveal or confide to any human breast, became daily more excited, and, of course, more vividly impressible, by a system of attack which operated through the nervous system; and in this state he was destined to sustain, with increasing frequency, the stealthy visitations of that apparition which from the first had seemed to possess so terrible a hold upon his imagination.
Publication date: 1872
Sheridan leFanu's The Familiar (In a Glass Darkly), got by Myth
Nationality of author: Irish

9. I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as Robinson Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years - generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco - and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life.
Publication date: 1868
Nationality of author: English
Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone, got by Myth

10. With his free paw, T-- covered his eyes. The immense head of the deformed, distended squander bug was too horrendous to look on.
Every feature of the revolting countenance was a separate nightmare itself. The ghastly, down-turned mouth was rimmed by folds of clammy, twitching flesh - as pale and grey as that of a drowned and waterlogged cadaver.
Publication date: 1995
Author: Robin Jarvis (got by Katie), English
Title: The Woven Path (Tales from the Wyrd Museum trilogy), got by Celia