Phil Kloer is soldiering on. Though they’ve taken away his book-specific blog, he’s still making mostly regular posts about book-related topics in the AJC’s far more general ATLarts group blog. Today’s post is particularly good, all about American Book Review‘s listing of their top 100 last lines from novels — the list is a PDF, so consider yourself warned.

I looked it over like the good English major I am. I found myself agreeing with about a third of their choices, shaking my head at another third and wondering why I’d never heard of the remaining third. But nowhere to be found was my personal favorite. To me, a last line ought to resonate long after the book is closed. Either with hope or with dread, it should linger, though the latter is more common than the former.

My choice? The last line from Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett.

And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot … no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half-angel, half-devil, all human …

Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield …

. . . forever.

Catch the reference there?

Now, my readers … tell me. What favorites do you have?