Only 2% of the 1.2 million different books sold in the U.S. in 2004 sold more than 5,000 copies.

Ishmael, the only surviving crewmember of the Pequod, is the narrator of Moby Dick.

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a grotesque but sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.

Boxer is a loyal, kind, dedicated, extremely strong, hard working, and respectable cart-horse.

This line originates from the poem "The Theologian's Tale" in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. The poem reads: "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing / Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness..."

J.D. Salinger once dated Oona, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, but she left him for Charlie Chaplin whom she later married.

Shortly before Quentin leaves for Harvard, Caddy becomes pregnant by a lover she is unable to identify, most likely Dalton Ames, a local Jefferson boy.