CRP's Blog

This week we’re sharing some of our favorite scenes from literature—you know, those chapters or passages that stick with you long after you’ve read (or reread) a book. Let us know what scenes you go back to in the comments below or on Twitter. #CRPreads

There have been many scenes that have stuck with me over the years that could go into a top ten list, but the first scene that came to mind, a scene that gives me goosebumps whenever I read it, is Adam Young choosing the Them as his friends over the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse in Good Omens.

“Adam looked at Them. They were his kind of people, too. You just had to decide who your friends really were.”

And then Pepper, Brian, and Wensleydale, wielding their homemade weapons made of wood and grass and string, defeat War, Pollution, and Famine. Because Adam—who isn’t evil-incarnate or good-incarnate, but rather human-incarnate—chose them.  –Mary Kravenas, marketing manager

There are a few scenes that stick out from childhood reading, and I now realize the common thread is kids getting awesome, thoughtful presents. If I’m picking one, though, it’s the oft-reread “Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves” chapter in Anne of Green Gables.  I always laughed at the lengths Matthew went to in order to procure the lovely dress for Anne. And her response upon receiving Matthew’s gift on Christmas morning was perfect: “‘I don’t see how I’m going to eat breakfast,’ said Anne rapturously. ‘Breakfast seems so commonplace at such an exciting moment.’” –Meaghan Miller, senior publicist and social media coordinator

I’d like to call out a scene from Infinite Jest that I still go back to time and again, years after having last read the book in full. For most of the final two hundred pages or so, Don Gately, a recovering pill addict, is confined to a hospital bed with a major injury and worrying about the very real prospect of arrest and imprisonment. Rather than consenting to morphine or any other painkillers that might screw with his recovery, though, he’s trying to white-knuckle it through the pain, and the reader is invited into his mind to white-knuckle it right along with him. Powerful ruminations on how to endure the seemingly unendurable abound. –Geoff George, publicist

Besides every scene in every Harry Potter, my favorite scene comes from my favorite book, The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. The main character, Peekay, dreams of becoming the world welterweight champion and wins every match he enters. But when he, a white English boy, has to battle the son of the Zulu nanny who raised him, for the first time he doesn’t want to win. With thousands watching, he realizes the impact of the moment—that they are battling for more than just themselves. That scene was so saturated with emotion, action and symbolism that I had to actually put the book down and come back to it later. –Emily Lewis, editorial and marketing assistant