Much loved descriptions

[Montero]

There is currently a thread on poetic prose and what constitutes purple. I thought this might work in parallel. Giving examples of descriptions that you love.
In terms of landscape descriptions my consistent favourite author is Rosemary Sutcliff. She has a habit of opening a book with a description of landscape/weather/nature/place that also evokes emotion. Here is an example - the first paragraph of The Rider of the White Horse.

"It had been one of the days when, with more than half the winter still to come, the year quickens, and suddenly, faint but unmistakable as the sound of distant trumpets, the promise of the far-off spring is in the air. There had been a thin warmth in the sunlight at noon; down in the lowings by the river the alders were beginning to show the first intangible deepening of colour that comes before the bloom of rising sap, and in the sheltered angle of the terrace steps the first chilly snowdrops were in flower, though it still wanted almost a fortnight to Candlemass. But the snowdrops were always early at Nun Appleton."

 

[Hermit the frog]

It does take you straight there, very evocative. As a contrast try this one for a feeling of heat. It's not scifi or fantasy, just a fav author. It's the first paragraph of the book.

James Lee Burke - The Rain Gods
On the burnt-out end of a July day in south west Texas, in a crossroads community whose only economic importance had depended on its relationship to a roach paste factory the EPA had shut down twenty years before, a young man driving a car without window glass stopped by an abandoned blue and white stucco filing station that had once sold pure gas during the Depression and was now home to bats and clusters of tumbleweeds. Next to the filling station was a mechanic’s shed whose desiccated boards lay collapsed upon a rusted pickup truck with four flat bald tyres. At the intersection a stop light hung from a horizontal cable strung between two power poles, its plastic covers shot out by .22 rifles.

 

[Montero]

Yes, even though it wasn't mentioned, I was picturing that pale sand/dust and baked out ground that I have seen on US Dramas.

Even more than the heat, I was seeing dereliction. Everything is broken, disused, at the end of its existence.

 

[Hex]

I love this one:

"Somewhere beyond the battening, urged sweep of three-bedroom houses rushing by their thousands across all the dark beige hills, somehow implicit in an arrogance or bite to the smog the more inland somnolence of San Narciso did lack, lurked the sea, the unimaginable Pacific, the one to which all surfers, beach pads, sewage disposal schemes, tourist incursions, sunned homosexuality, chartered fishing are irrelevant, the hole left by the moon's tearing-free and monument to her exile; you could not hear or even smell this but it was there, something tidal began to reach feelers in past eyes and eardrums, perhaps to arouse fractions of brain current your most gossamer microelectrode is yet too gross for finding."

(Thomas Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49)

 

[Jake Reynolds]

[FONT=&quot]Though many think him overwrought, I still love HP.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]At the Mountains of Madness[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The last lap of the voyage was vivid and fancy-stirring. Great barren peaks of mystery loomed up constantly against the west as the low northern sun of noon or the still lower horizon-grazing southern sun of midnight poured its hazy reddish rays over the white snow, bluish ice and water lanes, and black bits of exposed granite slope. Through the desolate summits swept ranging, intermittent gusts of the terrible antarctic wind; whose cadences sometimes held vague suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping, with notes extending over a wide range, and which for some subconscious mnemonic reason seemed to me disquieting and even dimly terrible.
[/FONT]

 

[Toby Frost]

Raymond Chandler: "From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away." And many, many more!

 

[Lucky_Lola]

"Night began covering the forests and meadows with its black kerchief. The night ignited sad little lights somewhere far below, alien lights that were no longer of any interest or use either to Margarita or the Master. Night overtook the cavalcade, spreading over them from above and scattering white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.

"Night was thickening, flying alongside the riders, grabbing at their cloaks and pulling them off, unmasking all illusions. And whenever Margarita, buffeted by the cool breeze, opened her eyes, she saw the changes that were taking place in the appearances of all who were flying to their destination. And when the crimson full moon rose up to meet them from behind the edge of the forest, all illusions vanished and the magical, mutable clothing fell into the swamp and drowned in the mist."

Mikhail Bulgakov, 'The Master and Margarita'

Not technically just a description, but I love the book.

 

[Galacticdefender]

"The ships hung in the air much the same as bricks don't" and "Wetter than an otter in a washing machine" both come to mind. Both from the Hitchhikers' series. (Douglas Adams, of course)

 

[Bonnie Milani]

I think my all time favorite desciption from any book anywhere (at least this week) is the opening of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". Here're the first 2 paragraphs:

<<When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.>>

It doesn't SEEM like it's much of a description at all. But if you've read the book, you'll realize that you've got the key players, core conflict & the protagonist all set in context right in those 2 paragraphs.

Now THAT'S descriptive!

 

[Montero]

I'm really fascinated by how very different all these descriptions are. Effective, evocative and different.

I've just started re-reading Barbara Hambly's Bride of the Rat God and have come across several paragraphs I just had to add here.

The book is set in 1920s Hollywood, around the production of a film. The PoV character is Norah, the sister-in-law of the female star of the film. The first description is at the end of a film screening, in the lobby of the film theatre. Mr Brown is a big film producer who has just invited selected members of the screening audience to a party at his house.

"The crowd in the lobby was thinning, changing color and composition as sotto voce invitations to Mr Brown's party circulated. The press still surrounded the buffet table like sharks feeding on a dying whale, but the flitter of beaded dresses and the black of formal evening clothes were bleeding away, leaving only a muddy, suit-brown."

And then the following day, at the film star's house.

"As they came closer, Norah saw that they were women clothed in diaphonous veils designed for a somewhat more classical climate than even California's. The veils hung limp with the rain; presumably umbrellas were not known in the Arcadian lands. But even that did not diminish the serene dignity of the tall, graceful woman who led, her dark hair hanging loose about her shoulders and her pale blue, piercing eyes made paler yet by the same heavy mascaro that Christine favored. "We have come to warn you!" cried the tall woman, raising a hand upon which gleamed ancient gold. "The shadow of evil lies upon this house!"
They picked their way over the rough ground to the brick steps and collected their veils for the climb. The other two women did not wear damp cheesecloth nearly as gracefully as their leader did. One of them was a short, elderly, rather pudgy type who looked as if her name should be Aunt Edna; the other, tall, thin, and flaxen fair, had a restless hungry gaze."