“Impossible! The word resonated throughout the large lecture hall.”
The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter, by Paul J. Steinhardt.
“The world was full of wild things then.”
Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel by A. W. Jantha
Since the boy had died, she didn’t sleep and many nights she prowled around the house, searching.
Poor Tom Is Cold, mystery (Murdoch #3) by Maureen Jennings
‘‘The Ford station wagon topped a hill before disappearing into the darkness.’’
Race Against Time–Jerry Mitchell
“Imp froze as he rounded the corner onto Regent Street, and saw four elven warriors shackling a Santa to a stainless-steel cross outside Hamleys Toy Shop.”
Dead Lies Dreaming by Charles Stross
“I was surprised to see a white man walk into Joppy’s bar.”
Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley
I think the last sentence of the book is noteworthy too (and no spoiler alert necessary): "“When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
Now, as for my next book to read:
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
– The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
“She was a soft-spoken, dark-haired, small-boned woman, not even coming up to their shoulders, like a kind of dwarf–but that was normal enough for a Mediterranean Greek of nearly four millennia ago, before super-diets and hybridization from seventy colonized planets had turned all humanity (so she had been told) into Scandinavian giants.”
Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ
“When ranch owner Opal Scarlett vanished, no one mourned except her three grown sons, Arlen, Hank, and Wyatt, who expressed their loss by getting into a fight with shovels.”
In Plain Sight, by C.J. Box.
“Sally.”
The Stand, by Stephen King. Been meaning to read it for years, but never got around to it before.
I started it about 35 years ago and never made it to the end. It’s very dense. Maybe I’d do better if I tried again now, but I’m not really inclined to.
Hmm. I’ve read The Stand at least a half-dozen times. One of my all-time favorite books. As an aside, CBS All Access is releasing its miniseries version on December 17, 2020.
Carry on.
“I was eight years old when I first found the magazine, sitting on the dusty wooden floor of a used-book store.”
Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir, by Ruth Reichl.
“Apocalypses always kick off at the witching hour.”
Battle Ground (Dresden #17), by Jim Butcher
“It was my mother’s lie that brought me home that July day.”
The Wedding Thief, by Mary Simses
“The cold Alaskan water pulled at the fishing boats that lined the dock, the boats straining against their moorings to run free with the tide.”
– The Last Detective, by Robert Crais
“Henry Stimson was agitated.”
The Pentagon: A History, by Steve Vogel
“The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as the ‘Styles Case’ has now somewhat subsided.”
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie
Three times for me. Very good stuff.
“The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead. He might have been drowned and fished out of the pool and laid out on the grass to dry while the police or the next-of-kin were summoned.”
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming
‘It’s a Welsh accent, ye see.’
By Hook or by Crook: A Journey in Search of English, by David Crystal
(The preface has a much more impressive first sentence:
The inspiration for this book came from reading W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, an atmospheric semi-fictional account of a walking tour through East Anglia, in which personal reflections, historical allusions, and traveller observations randomly combine into a mesmerizing novel about change, memory, oblivion, and survival.)