2008 is quickly (rather regrettably) coming to an end. This thus calls for a list of sorts to mark the end of such a topsy turvy year that started out like shit and is now ending on the best of possible notes imagined (prom, Cambodia, Thailand). It is now my great pleasure to present the Top 10 Best Reads of 2008 - a list I have been gleefully compiling in my head since I started studying for the IB exams. This list will have a twist though, instead of just listing down the titles and reasons for why the book is on my list, I shall instead just type out a sample of the opening paragraph/bunch of really long lines (or from one of the short stories within if it's a collection of short stories) and leave it for you guys to guess. The winner gets a very nice bar of chocolate!

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1. "It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. An expedition, I should say, which I will undertake alone, in the comfort of Mr Farraday's Ford; an expedition which, as I forsee it, will take me through much of the finest countryside of England to the West Country, and may keep me away from Darlington Hall for as much as five or six days."

2. "In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in The Times."

3. "My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother."

4. "The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms."

5. "The pubs, likesay, dead busy, full ay loco-locals and festival types, having a wee snort before heading off tae the next show. Some ay they looks okay... a bit heavy oan the hirays though, likesay."

6. "Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it."

"Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond - James Bond - you best spend your free time finger painting or playing shuffleboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed-potatoes way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it began - with a wheeze.""

7. "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August 1974. Specialised readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, "Gender Identitiy in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites," published in the journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or maybe you've seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That's me on page 578, standing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes."

8. "The train was late. Under the dim lamplight, the platform was cast in half shadow. As Meng left the train, a snowflake floated down and landed on his neck. The wind was blowing open his coat at the bottom. It produced a whistling sound which reminded him that the weather here in Tiancheng was colder than he'd expected. Bag in hand, he walked with the throng towards the station exit, and though he kept looking about him, he couldn't spot the Song Dynasty tower that he remembered. Besides the darkness and the lamplight, he saw nothing but the ungainly contours of the high-rises, which looked the same here as everywhere else. No doubt the buildings had blocked his view of the tower."

9. "Whenever I meet a man, I catch myself wondering what our child would look life if we were to make a baby. It's practically second nature to me now. Whether he's handsome or ugly, old or young, a picture of our child flashes across our mind. My hair is light brown and feathery fine, and if his is jet black and coarse, then I predict our child's hair will be the perfect texture and colour. Wouldn't it? I always start out imaging the best possible scenarios for these children, but before long I've conjured up horrific versions from the very opposite ends of the spectrum."

10. "It was a queer, sultry summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I don't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers - goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves."

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If you were really bored/desperate, a clue would be to go digging through books I've read and blogged, because they would most likely be on the above list. Anyway guessing gogogo!