“March 1783. Newburgh, New York. George Washington had to wear glasses. It was a secret.”
George Washington’s Spectacular Spectacles: The Glasses That Saved America, written by Selene Castrovilla, illustrated by Jenn Harney
“A boy with a parrot on his shoulder was walking along the railway tracks. His gait was dreamy, and he swung a daisy as he went.”
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
“The cool breath of evening slips off the wooded hills, displacing the heat of the day, and with it come the birds, as eager for the cool as I am.”
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Without the C,
crime is simply a cold case,
unsolvable here
or the future here.”
The Reinvented Detective: Tales of Futuristic Crimes & Mysteries Beyond Time, edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek. (From “The Missing C: Police Report #1” by Jane Yolen)
“A man is sitting on a bed. He is my father. The body of a woman is beneath the covers. She was my mother.”
Innocent by Scott Turow
To begin at the beginning:
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters’ and rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
- Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
“Nate Romanowski was thigh-high in the icy water of North Piney Creek under the craggy profile of the snow-covered Wyoming Range.”
Battle Mountain by C.J. Box
“My life was changed forever by a single photograph.”
Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist, by Jasmin Graham
“I had never seen war, or even talked about it at length with someone who had, but I was young and knew something of violence, and so believed that war would be no more than a new experience for me, as other things–the possession of authority in Thrax, say, or my escape from the House Absolute–had been new experiences.”
The Citadel of the Autarch, by Gene Wolfe
October 25, 1944
San Bernardino Strait, Philippines
A giant stalked through the darkness.
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour, by James D Hornfischer (reread)
Leslie Mayflower glowered out between the dusty blinds of his darkened living room, watching the street.
Dead Man’s Hand, by James J Butcher
“The courtroom of the Honorable Arthur T. Freeman was as stern, stark, and impersonal as the justice it dispensed.” (Yes, “Honorable”, not “Honourable”, is how it appears in the book. Presumably the author isn’t British.)
The Strange Trial of Mr. Hyde, by John A. Sanford
“It’s a truism that there’s physics everywhere you look.”
The Velocity of Honey: And More Science of Everyday Life, by Jay Ingram
The vertical cut in the cliff face only looked razor-thin.
Hell Hath No Fury, by David Weber and Linda Evans (reread)
“By the time I was ten I had decided–in almost total ignorance of the difficulty of the problem–that the universe was full up.”
Teaching Science Fiction: Education for Tomorrow, edited by Jack Williamson (Note: The above sentence is from a preface by Carl Sagan.)
“The world is four thousand years old.”
Learning the World, a science fiction novel by Ken MacLeod.
“Night is generally my time for walking.”
– The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens.
The very tall, powerfully built man strode down the early morning hallway like an icebreaker through floe ice.
The Road to Hell, by Davd Weber and Joelle Presby (reread)
“After an uneasy night, Phil went to retrieve the body with a tarp, because a blanket would need washing afterwards, and a garbage bag seemed too cruel as well as too thin.”
No One Will Come Back For Us and Other Stories, Premee Mohamed
(First line of the first story, Below the Kirk, Below the Hill)
“In sociological terms, they call it the fundamental attribution error.”
The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding
“It was not yet dawn when they came for her,”
The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
“Argenta is probably the second-oldest quartz camp in Montana.”
Ghost Towns of Montana, by Donald C. Miller
The New Public Offices building lies just across the road from St. James’s Park, in the heart of Central London.
Seven Days of Infamy, by Nicholas Best
Crabs scurried out of the way of the two samurai as they and their companions walked along the beach of Sandy Bottom Bay, the large bay near the middle of the southwest coast of Texada Island.
1637: The Pacific Initiative, by Iver P Cooper
“White clouds streaked across the bright blue sky over the Pacific Ocean near Baja California.”
Who Owns the Moon? And Other Conundrums of Exploring and Using Space, by Cynthia Levinson and Jennifer Swanson
“With a cheshire cat grin affixed firmly to his features as the ever-present cigar was to his person, Al Calavicci ascended the basement stairs of the Quantum Leap Complex at a jaunty pace.”
Quantum Leap: Search and Rescue, by Melissa Crandall
“The good news, of course, is that someone died today.”
I See You’ve Called In Dead by John Kenney
Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy , was not a happy man.
Abandon Ship! : The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, the Navy’s Greatest Sea Disaster, by Richard F Newcomb
On a windswept fall day, on a gray morning after the colorful agony of autumn had passed but before the deep, blank snows of winter sealed off the world, Captain Charles Butler McVay III, the former commander of the World War II cruiser USS Indianapolis, woke and took stock of his day.
In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors, by Doug Stanton
(Yes, I’m reading two books on the same subject, getting a better view of the big picture than I would if I read one book and then the other. Interesting that the two books start with the viewpoints of the two captains involved.)