Sir Walter Scott by Henry Raeburn.

From the Wikipedia article on Kenilworth by Walter Scott:

In January 1820 Archibald Constable and John Ballantyne concluded an agreement to act as joint publishers of Kenilworth, but Scott had still to complete The Monastery and write its sequel The Abbot which kept him occupied until August, so that Kenilworth had to wait until September. Writing then progressed steadily, and the new novel was completed on 27 December.

From the Wikipedia article on Finnegans Wake by James Joyce:

For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the book, adding what would become chapters I.1 and I.6, and revising the already written segments to make them more lexically complex.

James Joyce by Djuna Barnes, 1922.

The book’s epigraph reads “Multum in parvo.” Did the writer create an expectation of comprehensiveness with that epigraph, or did it just make you think he was a pompous twit to pick an epigraph in Latin?

Did you notice that the candle at the beginning of the book is used as a symbol of the moral light? Did it help that the author wrote, “This candle symbolizes the moral light that illumines our perilous journey through life”?

On page 51, the protagonist steals ten dollars from her own mother’s purse. Who does that, anyway?

Was the writer correct to use the subjunctive mood in the third line of page 362, or is it time to abandon the subjunctive mood as a relic of the barbaric and oppressive patriarchal past?

Why do you suppose the writer chose an interrogative format to express his contempt for the interrogative format? Was it an effective choice?

If you were a tree, what would you say to the next woodpecker who came along? What would your mother say if she heard you using language like that?

Which of the characters did you identify with most? The good ones or the evil ones?

School board (noun).—A committee elected by the people to pass the ignorance of the current generation down to our successors.

Moola (noun).—The solfeggio of an operatic cow.

Syntax (noun).—Any excyse ymposed on harmful habyts or actyvytyes, such as cygarettes or fyzzy drynks.