“I try not to breathe as the last corset hook is yanked into place.”
Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto.
He fed the canaries and the geese and the dogs and the cats’
-From a story named Massinello Pietro by Ray Bradbury, in the anthology We’ll Always Have Paris
“I asked my father, once, why he chose to curse us before we were born.”
Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth
“On a night like any other, pinned somewhere along the dreary timeline of another cold, endless Pittsburgh winter, two men entered Montefiore Hospital and changed the trajectory of John Moon’s life.”
American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics, by Kevin Hazzard.
THE IRON TRIANGLE
Autumn, 533 AD
Belisarius watched Eusebius and his crew as they carefully slipped the mine off the deck of the Victrix, using a ramp they’d set up in the stern for the purpose.
The Dance of Time (Belisarius #6), by Eric Flint and David Drake
In the late morning of August 29, 1939, James H. Williams stood at the center of the upper concourse at Grand Central Terminal, waiting for a writer he’d agreed to talk to."
Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal, by Eric K. Washington.
“The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.”
– Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy
“Lorne Trumley had called dispatch to report a dead moose on his ranch. Since it was two weeks after the close of moose-hunting season in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, Joe Pickett had responded.”
Shadows Reel by C.J. Box
“A young fellow, a tobacco peddler by trade, was on his way from Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the Deacon of the Shaker settlement, to the village of Parker’s Falls, on Salmon River.”
The Best Crime Stories of the 19th Century, edited by Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greenberg. (Note that the above is from the first story, “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.)
“Years and years ago the late British philosopher Isaiah Berlin floored me by saying ‘You should write your autobiography.’”
Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author, by Herman Wouk
“The fact that the other planets of our solar system were not likely abodes for life was becoming obvious even by the early middle of the twentieth century to anyone who kept up with science – which usually includes science-fiction writers”
Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future (edited by Gardner Dozois)
“If you read nothing else we’ve sent home, please at least read this.”
To Be Taught If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers
I wish Eric Flint hadn’t died.
“Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States without knowing it, at 2:15 in the morning of 14 September 1901.”
Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris
“A nurse held the door open for them.”
The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty
I hope his wife gives permission for some of the 1632 authors to continue the series…
Pech Merle Cave, southwestern France, Late Ice Age, 24,600 years ago.
The Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human History, by Brian Fagan
(italics in original)
“This is not an abstract book about God and theology.”
When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold S. Kushner
“Phryne Fisher was trying to read Chaucer.”
Death by Water, by Kerry Greenwood
“Sitting about the cowcatcher, on an observation bench rigged for him by British East Africa Railway officials, he feels the thrust of the locomotive pushing him upland from Mombasa, over the edge of the parched Taru plateau.”
Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris