“Talking about novels strikes me as too broad and amorphous a topic to get the ball rolling, so I will start by addressing something more specific: novelists.”
Novelist as a Vocation, by Haruki Murakami
“Elsie was with Gaspard, her live-in renal failure patient, when her ex-husband called to inform her that his girlfriend, Olivia, had been kidnapped in Port-au-Prince.”
Everything Inside, by Edwidge Danticat (Note: This is a story collection, and the above sentence is from the first one, “Dosas”.)
“The doctor’s waiting room, which was very small, was almost full when the Turpins entered and Mrs Turpin, who was very large, made it look even smaller by her presence”.
Yep, still reading Flannery O’Connor, the story is ‘Revelation’.
“Here they come.”
Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
“Fall had come to Bodgaru-by-the-Sea, and winter was not now far away.”
The Witling by Vernor Vinge
“My name is August Epp–irrelevant for all other purposes, other than that I’ve been appointed the minute-taker for the women’s meetings because the women are illiterate and unable to do it themselves.”
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Yeah, Moby-Dick never gets old, does it…?
“As the cruise ship almost tips over, the horizon that once bisected my lovely balcony door rises like a theater curtain and disappears. Now the sea is the stage. I tumble off my bed onto the floor and roll like a stuntman.”
The Passenger by Chaney Kwak
General of the Army and Marines Pete Alden hopped up on the freshly repaired dock on the Old Sofesshk waterfront and got his first good look at the ancient Grik capital.
Winds of Wrath – the fifteenth (and final) Destroyermen book by Taylor Anderson
“The morning was bleak and cold.”
A Man Called Peter by Catherine Marshall
Marjory Hall is an author i can’t find anything on except she wrote a bunch of early post-high school “working girl” ie typist, secretaries etc in the big city novels …
Marjory Hall wrote a so-so book I read (last year, I believe) called White Collar Girl.
Back on topic: “The Old North bell tolls the hour, and I realize that I’ll be late.”
The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
“Why make a scroll if you have the technology to make a book?”
The Role of the Scroll: An Illustrated Introduction to Scrolls in the Middle Ages, by Thomas Forrest Kelly
Today I have been thinking about the dead.
Enemy of God (Book two of the Warlord trilogy)
Bernard Cornwell
(Great books btw)
Eighty-three light-minutes from Saturn, a construct far smaller than Janus but still impressive orbited the planet Earth.
The Janus File, third in a series by David Weber and Jacob Holo
“The King stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored.”
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel.
“As Detective Inspector Phil Auden went through the door of the Yellowthread Street Police Station in the district of Hong Bay and the day shift left, night fell, seven Jumbo jets carrying a total of two thousand tourists, businessmen, wives, and others landed in procession at Kai Tak airport, an American destroyer disembarked eight hundred bored, thirsty, lustful, belligerent sailors for forty-eight hours shore leave, and the Chinese Communists across the border took it into their heads to turn the water off.”
Yellowthread Street by William Marshall
Officially, on 30 August 1940, nothing happened at Shingle Bay.
The Suicide Exhibition, by Justin Richards
“I don’t remember the first time I was on a horse.”
Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal, by Sarah Maslin Nir
“The wargs chased the elf over Pittsburgh Scrap and Salvage’s tall chain-link fence shortly after the hyperphase gate powered down.”
Tinker, by Wen Spencer
“July 4th 11:10 P.M. - Six warriors crouched in the shadow of a tomb.”
The Warriors by Sol Yurick