Good luck, JohnGalt!
“When the temperatures drop, the winds are whipping, and it’s cozier to stay inside, a little treat can go a long way in helping us get out the door.”
1000 Hours Outside: Activities to Match Screen Time with Green Time, by Ginny Yurich
“It was hard to articulate the point at which we switched from wanting to get older to feeling like we could stand to be a little bit younger.”
Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go: Stories, by Cleo Qian (Note: The above quote is from the first story, “Chicken. Film. Youth.”
“We are conditioned to think of the world as a mosaic of sovereign states, each possessing its own distinct and bordered portion of the Earth’s surface.” — Invisible Borders in a Bordered World, eds. Diener and Hagen
(And not just because I co-authored a chapter.)
Thanks for the heads-up on this book. I just ordered a copy for my wife.
“The train was two carriages long in its entirety, with rattling single-glazed windows, and it wound its way contentedly along the country line at whatever speed it felt like.”
Grave Expectations, by Alice Bell
I hope she enjoys it. It’s not all speculative fiction, though. I thought the best story was “Seagull Village”.
Back on topic:
“One day, when I was a kid, our house caught fire.”
Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (Note that the above quote is from Jerry Zucker.)
“No,” Kaj Nevis told the others firmly.
Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin
“It started at one-thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the east portico of St. Paul’s at Covent Garden.”
Rivers of London (UK) or Midnight Riot (US) by Ben Aaronovitch.
"Dear Committee Members,
Over the past twenty-odd years I’ve recommended who knows how many talented candidates for the Bentham January residency–that enviable literary oasis in the woods south of Skowhegan: the solitutude, the pristine cabins, the artistic camaraderie, and those exquisite hand-delivered satchels of apples and cheese…"
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
“It took following their journeys
from Africa to London,
to understand why bravery was never a choice.”
Wearing My Mother’s Heart: Poems, by Sophia Thakur (Note that the above sentence is from the untitled first poem.)
“In a letter of my father’s written on the 16th of July 1964 he said:
The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala.”
Beren and Lúthien, by JRR Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
“A sentient space station should have perfect temperature, Mallory Viridian thought.”
Chaos Terminal by Mur Lafferty
“The only impartial witness was the sun.”
– The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, by David Grann
“I pull into the desert town at sunset feeling empty.”
Death Valley, by Melissa Broder
“The desert was empty, as though a great drain had sucked the world underground.”
The Order of Odd Fish, by James Kennedy
“In advanced modernity the social production of wealth is systematically accompanied by the social production of risks.”
Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity by Ulrich Beck, translated by Mark Ritter
“Eighteen!” bellowed Viv, bringing her saber around in a flat curve that battered the wight’s skull off its spine.
Bookshops and Bonedust, by Travis Baldree. A well-written and entertaining fantasy story about books, baking, love, and skeletons. I recommend it and Legends & Lattes, the next in the series.
I think I’ll check that out, I like some genre stories.
They’re very much “slice of life” (or Undeath) stories, not heavy on the action. Very warm and good characters.