Cure for insomnia

I've been tagged by Ali in a book meme, that seeing as I can't get to sleep, is worthwhile doing!

The instructions are:- Take ten books, and transcribe the fifth sentence from page fifty six.- Make sure that at least five books are fiction, provide five hints, and pass the meme on to six other bloggers.

You're meant to guess what the books are... through my hints. I haven't actually read all these books through myself! haha

1) "He got up shaking his head."
Hint: From a collection of short stories an American who's famous for minimalism. The quote is a pretty good example, really. This collection was his first, first published in 1976.

2) "There were little holes in the cuffs of his thermal undershirt."
Another cracker!
Hint: The author of this postmodern 80s novel went onto to write "Underworld", the runner-up on the New York Times' survey of the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years.

3) "Yet according to a study released in late 2003 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, people who attend church more than once a week vote Republican by 63 percent to 37 percent; people who seldom or never attend vote Democratic by 62 percent to 38 percent."

Hint: The man who wrote this book about politics and Christianity is married to the woman who inspired the TV series, The Vicar of Dibley.

4) "I tried to persuade myself that an obscure feeling of revolt had been gradually coming to a head in his slow mind, but to challenge this was the undoubted fact that he had never shown any impatience with the monotony of his life."
Hint: this is actually from page 57, as 56 was blank.
This novel is based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin, and is written by Somerset Maugham.

5) "ESTRAGON: At the very beginning."
Hint: From a play by Samuel Beckett.

6) "But he thought they were the portraits of the saints and the great men of the order who were looking down on him as he passed."
Hint: A semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce.

7) ' "Please" he said, attempting to remove her."
Hint: The quote refers to a dog, by the way. This acclaimed debut novel written by a young Jewish man, was adapted into a film starring Elijah Wood in 2005.

8) "The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistable."
Hint: Only Oscar Wilde would know..

9) "Scared the Black Flu might strike them, some confused even their families: people singing out Mum? Here I um- But my family, they aren't there."
Hint: This is a novel in verse, by Les Murray, about a sailor, Friedrich, Boettcher.

10) "The sylvan forests and sublime beaches of western Van Diemen's Land."
Hint: This is the last book I read. Regulars at this blog should know the answer...

I tag: Ben, Ruth, Nixter, Aimee. If you too, have a bout of insomnia!!