I loved those books, have most of them.
“As a sprawling world city covering some 600 square miles, with 300 different languages spoken and more than 8 million people sharing a history stretching back 2,000 years, it’s hardly surprising that London throws up so much that is strange, unexplained, or just plain odd.”
Bizarre London: Discover the Capital’s Secrets & Surprises, by David Long.
“Sergeant Manuel Santiago Garcia, second in command of the troopers stationed at Reina de Los Angeles, sat in his room.”
Zorro: The Daring Escapades, edited by Audrey Parente and Daryl McCullough. (Note that this is a story collection written after the character–created by Johnston McCulley-- entered the public domain. The quote is from the first story, “Zorro: Death of a Grandee”, by John L. French.)
“Brad Miller woke up at 6 A.M. even though his meeting with Roy Kineer, the retired Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was scheduled for nine.”
Executive Privilege, by Phillip Margolin
“In 1917 Harvard’s Robert Yerkes assembled a dream team of American psychologists in Vineland, New Jersey.”
How Do You Fight A Horse-Sized Duck? And Other Perplexing Puzzles From The Toughest Interviews In The World, by William Poundstone
“Look at the fans, Neos and Slans
Milling in the hotel lobby.”
Rivets!!!: The Science Fiction Musicals of Mark M. Keller and Sue Anderson (The above is from the first one, “Mik Ado About Nothing”.)
Aiyeeee! A pet peeve and frequent nitpick: the title is “Chief Justice of the United States,” no more and no less (Margolin’s fault, not yours, obviously).
I wondered if anybody else would notice that!
A pet peeve of mine is books that begin with the character waking up this way. And what’s odd about getting up at six under the circumstances? Isn’t he going to shower–and look at himself in the mirror so the author can describe his appearance–eat breakfast, maybe review what the meeting’s about, and travel to the meeting? (Unless the Chief Justice is going to Miller’s home, in which case I’d lead with that.) I get up three hours before I go grocery shopping.
Back in play:
“I slipped into Sudan’s enclosure at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy and cautiously approached the gentle giant.”
Wilder: How Rewilding Is Transforming Conservation and Changing the World, by Millie Kerr (Note: The animal is a rhino.)
“It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you.”
Trumps of Doom, Roger Zelazny
“When I think of purity, I don’t think of the water that runs in the river past our backyard, or the water in the baptism font at the front of the church, where my mother and father and their mothers and fathers were baptized, all the way back; where I was baptized too.”
My Throat An Open Grave, by Tori Bovalino
“Like bureaucracy, knowledge has an inexorable tendency to ramify as it grows.”
Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth, by Lynn Margulis and Karlene Schwartz; foreword by Stephen Jay Gould
" ‘You’re bad luck for me,’ said Haakon Chevalier."
The Oppenheimer Alternative, by Robert J. Sawyer
“This is an image of a fumarole; an opening in the crust of the earth that emits steam and volcanic gas, and was made in 1867, in what was then the three-year-old state of Nevada, where the photographer set up his camera in a small, dry basin that is still today an area of significant geothermal activity.”
Double Exposure: Resurveying the West with Timothy O’Sullivan, America’s Most Mysterious War Photographer by Robert Sullivan
“The man was covered in seaweed, gnarled fronds covering him like garlands.”
A Haunting in the Arctic, by C.J. Cooke
“–and that was how we got the moon back up the mountain and into the sky, and no one was ever the wiser.”
Mammoths at the Gates, by Nghi Vo
“In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do.”
– Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay
“Newsstand-borne science fiction and fantasy, and supernatural-horror fiction, are changing.”
Benchmarks Concluded: F&SF “Books” Columns 1987-1993, by Algis Budrys. (This is from the first column, about the books Interzone, The First Anthology, edited by John Clute et al and Terry Carry’s Best Science Fiction of the Year #15, edited by Terry Carr.)
“First day of school. Ever.”
Misfit by Gary Gulman
“It was to be the final theory, a single framework that would unite all the forces of the cosmos and choreograph everything from the motion of the expanding universe to the most minute dance of subatomic particles.”
The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, by Michio Kaku