“I pluck up the courage to make my move and begin my ascent of the staircase.”
Keep It In the Family, John Marrs
“They’re out there.”
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
“Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is the pinnacle.”
Game of Dog Bones, by Laurien Berenson
“When what became the National Cathedral was envisioned in Pierre L’Enfant’s plan for Washington, D.C. in 1791, slavery was not only legal in much of the young United States but would swell for decades to come.”
Now and Forever by Kevin Eckstrom
“This is not a memoir.”
Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas, by Jesse Cole with Don Yaeger.
“Andy Taylor and Barney Fife could make the world stand still.”
Andy & Don - The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show, by Daniel de Vise
In his seventh-floor office overlooking the wooded campus of Langley, Virginia, John Brennan sat at a conference table, hunched over his laptop.
The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future by Chris Whipple
“The first person I called after I found out I’d placed in the North American Portrait Society’s huge career-making yearly contest was my dad.”
Hello Stranger, by Katherine Center
“When it all happened, I was no longer a young girl, but I still had the romanticism and the sense of adventure of the debutante whose bright, preordained future had been hijacked by the War.”
The Prague Coup, written by Jean-Luc Fromental and illustrated by Miles Hyman
“When Walter Taylor arrived, Betty was still in the kitchen, standing over her husband’s body.”
Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero by Douglas Perry
“There are very few places left in the world that could be considered true wilderness.”
Kinfolk Wilderness, edited by John Burns et al.
“It’s possible to love something too much.”
A Good House For Children, by Kate Collins
“Scorn activates in the cloud with zir most recent backups more than 900,000 seconds out of date.”
Emergent Properties, by Aimee Ogden
“What follows is a series of text messages between a group of ER physicians across the country.”
Code Gray: Death, Life, and Uncertainty in the ER, by Farzon A. Nahvi, M.D.
I’m going to post the first lines from an assortment of the first handful of paragraphs, just to warn you off a book:
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Hollis Shaw is something of a unicorn.
Hollis was a good student, an outstanding softball player, and a hard worker.
In her senior year of high school, Hollis wrote what her English teacher Mrs. Fox called “the best college essay in thirty-one years.”
We were all, however, quick to claim Hollis when she became internet-famous!
Hollis’s millions of fans wanted it all. Her life was so neat, so tidy, so blessed, and their lives improved just by being Hollis-adjacent.
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Wouldn’t fault you for assuming that this is some public persona that we get to watch crumble as her dark side is revealed under pressure. But sorry, she’s really portrayed as just that wonderful.
There are lengthy descriptions of her and her friends’ outfits, and you follow along as they shop in various upscale boutiques, giving you a feel for fetching outfits, even the ones that they decide not to buy because they find just the perfect cobalt-on-ecru boatneck three-season sweater to complement the classic Nantucket Red skirt…
And every time a character walks into yet another room in Hollis’s beach house, you’re treated to a description of her perfect accessories (and where she picked them up), which books she’s chosen to scatter on the end tables, and how her clever eye for design has balanced persimmon throw pillows against a mélange of pastel peach and seafoam love seats…
Arggggh!
Avoid The Five-Star Weekend by Erin Hilderbrand.
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(In my defense, I grew up vacationing and going to an art camp on Nantucket Island, and some of her books are slices of island life, but this one’s just sickly sweet… too much Splenda in the sage/ginger aquas frescas)
“Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.”
Go Tell It On the Mountain, by James Baldwin
“Warren G. Harding is best known as America’s worst president.”
Warren G. Harding , by John W. Dean
Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes of the Royal Australian Navy woke soon after dawn. From On the Beach; you know the story.
The last time I read it was in college; the paperback book that I’m using is from Scholastic Book Services (with offices in New York, Toronto, London, Auckland, Sydney, and Tokyo), from a 1972 printing. The binding is falling apart after all these years.
As I’m reading it, I keep remembering back to when I last saw the movie version; I need to find it again.
Boy, is it a depressing story. I can handle only a chapter or two at a time.
“The connections between mathematics and poetry are profound.”
Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature, by Sarah Hart
“I have written this book as an admirer of Bob Dylan’s work, and I picture you as another admirer, at least potentially.”
Listening to Bob Dylan , by Larry Starr
I’ve read this book multiple times, about once every five years. It’s one of my favorites. As a child, the movie was perhaps the first adult-themed film I ever saw, and growing up during the Duck-and-Cover era, it affected me greatly. The paperback edition I own was actually the one released in conjunction with the movie. Like yours, it’s falling apart.