muckefuck | Phear the phlat books! (Reply)

Earlier today I walked past a pile of un- and partly-read books stacked on the shelf, so I tried the page 100 test on all of them. To my delight, each began with a complete paragraph, so I present them here for your amusement. Votes on which contains the most pretentious prose will be tabulated and summarised pour moi. Also, anyone who can successfully identity all five volumes will have my undying respect. (Google away; I don't think even half of them are online yet.)

It was Shrovetide. Nastasya Petrovna and I had managed, only just, to obtain tickets for an evening performance at the theatre. It was a performance of Esmeralda which she had long wanted to see. The show went very well and, in accordance with Russian custom, ended very late. The night was a fine one, and Nastasya Petrovna and I walked home together. As we went, I noticed that my distiller's wife was in a very reflective state of mind, and that many of her replies were non sequiturs.
He was young and plump and had a nose like a duckling, his round, peasant's face emerged from his stiff ecclesiastical collar, and he dropped his eyes.
The attractive coast road swings across the headland to Myrtleville, a tiny but much-favoured beach now surrounded by little villas. Among the older houses is the former Mirmar, built by Sir John Trant and originally known as the 'Cottage on the Rocks'. As a member of the diplomatic corps Sir John travelled widely, accompanied by his daughter Clarissa whose Journal of Clarissa Trant recounts her various experiences as well as giving a glimpse of life in this small and once relatively isolated cover.
Christopher was thrilled by the austerity of Edward's tone. He was also chilled--more so than he would admit to himself. Did he already know that he would never take the street to that café?
That year of her return to Dublin and the years following--1911 and 1912--were years of terrible misery for the poor, not merely of Dublin but the United Kingdom. In England, where national politics readily assimilated these economic problems, everything passed off more or less smoothly, but what started in Dublin as a series of Labour troubles ended in a revolution. That merger between socialism and nationalism she was to symbolize when she fought, in 1916, with the Citizen Army under the flag of the Plough and the Stars.

Is it any wonder I haven't made more progress in devouring new acquisitions to my library?