“This is the house where I say goodbye.”
-”Wandering” by Herman Hesse
“She fell like a maple seed, pirouetting on an autumn breeze.”
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Classic detective novels: the elite choice for quarantine reading!
“‘That’s torn it!’ said Lord Peter Wimsey.”
— Dorothy L. Sayers; The Nine Tailors (1934)
“The Galactic Empire was falling.”
Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
“The First Galactic Empire had endured for tens of thousands of years.”
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
“‘Every hero,’ Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ‘becomes a bore at last.’ More than a hundred years after his birth on May 29, 1917, John Fitzgerald Kennedy confounds Emerson’s dictum and retains a hold on the popular imagination.”
JFK: A Vision for America ed. by Stephen Kennedy Smith and Douglas Brinkley
Actually, The Court of Last Resort isn’t a novel, although parts of it read like good short stories. Erle Stanley Gardner and other men with knowledge of the law and criminology investigated cases of people who were possibly wrongly convicted of serious crimes. These are some of the cases they worked on. It’s an interesting book.
My current book:
“Lilly’s lamp blew out as she bolted down the hallway.”
The Rithmatist, by Brandon Sanderson
“I’ve learned that deciding whom you marry is the most important decision you’ll ever make.”
Live and Learn and Pass It On, edited by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
“Bleak and windswept is the little town of Kirkby-Malhouse, harsh and forbidding are the fells upon which it stands.”
Tales of Adventure and Medical Life, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“When I was a child, art seemed like a tunnel to me.”
Jerome Robbins: By Himself, edited by Amanda Vaill
“They were all in the family room that morning when the surprising letters came.”
The Secrets of the Pirate Inn by Wylly Folk St. John
“The Norway campaign seemed like a military disaster for the Alllies, but without it Britain might have been conquered in 1940.”
Operation Sea Lion: The Failed Nazi Invasion That Turned the Tide of War, by Leo McKinstry
“William Blakely? Oh my God, you mean Blockade Billy. Nobody’s asked me about him in years.”
Blockade Billy by Stephen King (2010)
“Let us pray for the Kingdom of God on Earth, as for ourselves, our church, our country, our cause, and for all sorts and conditions of men in a world at war.”
Prayers for Private Devotions in War-Time by Rev. Willard L. Sperry (1942)
“Once, when I was very young, Father took me in the motor-car to the Via Appia, to see a man being crucified.”
The Aquiliad, by Somtow Sucharitkul
“Mathematics is the subject many of us love to hate.”
Numbers: How Counting Changed the World, by Tom Jackson
“Each of us bears his own hell.”
– Kona Winds, by Scott Kikkawa.
“I don’t know why I’m writing this. That’s not true. Maybe I do know and just don’t want to admit to myself.”
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (2019)
“I take a deep breath and look out at the sea of faces.”
Out to Lunch by Stacey Ballis
"Patricia Kyle said, ‘Is this Elvis Cole, the world’s greatest detective?’ "
– Lullaby Town, by Robert Crais.
“Time and responsibility. What a vapid subject for a vapid truism and gaseous generalities adding up to the world’s most boring sermon.”
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility, by Stewart Brand.
“In the late and last afternoon of an April long ago, a forlorn little group of travellers cross a remote upland in the far south-west of England.”
A Maggot, by John Fowles
“Jennifer Sheridan stood in the door to my office as if she were Fay Wray and I was King Kong and a bunch of black guys in sagebrush tutus were going to tie her down so that I could have my way.”
– Free Fall, by Robert Crais