Tag: Highlights: Lines Worth Repeating Page 2 of 3

I was shocked as I put this together that I only had one selection from The Winter of Frankie Machine, but all the other bits only work in context (and you might argue the same of this one). At the same time, I assure you I exercised restraint with both Russo and Harrow (and, yes, I typed that Russow and Harro initially).

The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow

He finds the boat, the Becky Lynn. The name tells the story—two guys finally get their wives’ permission to buy a boat together and name it after both wives so they don’t get jealous. Not of each other, of the boat.

Which never works, Frank thinks.

Women and boats mix like…

Women and boats.

Straight Man by Richard Russo

I couldn’t understand her failure to grasp what was happening. It was my opinion, then and now, that two people who love each other need not necessarily have the same dreams and aspirations, but they damn well ought to share the same nightmares.

One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue everything through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate. But to my way of thinking, we’ve worked long and hard to achieve this silence, Lily’s and mine, so fraught with understanding.

The student newspaper contains a lot more humor, though most of it is unintentional. Except for the front page (news) and the back page(sports), the campus rag contains little but Letters to the Editor, which I scan first for allusions to myself and next for unusual content. Which in the current climate is any subject other than the Unholy Trinity of insensitivity, sexism, and bigotry, which the self-righteous (though not always literate) letter writers want their readers to know they’re against. As a group they seem to believe that high moral indignation offsets, and indeed outweighs, all deficiencies of punctuation, spelling, grammar, logic, and style. In support of this notion, there’s only the entire culture.

There’s no bad side of the tracks in Railton, also no good side. The rule is, the closer you get to the tracks, the worse.

You may not believe me, but I’ve always liked you, Hank. You’re like a character in a good book–almost real, you know?

The world is divided between kids who grew up wanting be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.

Perhaps no man should possess the key to his wife’s affections, what makes and keeps him worthy in her eyes. That would be like gaining unauthorized access to God’s grace, we would not use such knowledge wisely.

The Rhythm of Time by Questlove with S.A. Cosby

Kasia spun around on her work stool to face him. There was tape on the bridge of her glasses, but they weren’t broken. Kasia called it an affectation.

Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani

“Justice served with a side of pineapple. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Do you ever worry about anything?” I ask him, dropping into a chair. I eye the table sadly. It has been cleared and no further refreshments have been set out.

“My next bottle of wine,” Kenta says with mock seriousness. “When I’ll meet my heart’s companion.”

I snort. “Aren’t they the same thing?”

I slam against the wall, collapsing in a heap on the floor. Now would be a good time to black out, I think groggily. But I don’t.

The Manifestor Prophecy by Angie Thomas

Dad hates books about magic. He calls them “fabricated tales written for profit.” Technically, all fiction books are fabricated tales written for profit, but I let the dude have his moments.

This Bird Has Flown by Susanna Hoffs

So what if the lyrics were a bit on the nose. Isn’t that the great thing about songs? They give voice to thoughts, and feelings, and urges one might hesitate to reveal some other way.

“Have you ever noticed that there are way more sad love songs than happy love songs?” I said after a silence.
“No,” she signed, ” but I’ve done a tally. I suspect you’re right though.”
Which might explain why I haven’t come up with anything great yet song-wise. But I am trying. I’m beginning to think happiness as an emotion is an anathema to song writing.

Did I just use “anathema” correctly? It’s one of those words that can suddenly feel wrong. Like “pulchritude.”

“Music is a conspiracy. It’s a conspiracy to commit beauty.” — Jose Antonio Abreu

To calm myself, I imagined my future creative life in Oxford with Tom, my very own Rochester. Except not rich. Or arrogant. Or twice my age.

“Life is but a dream. Except it’s a lucid dream and you’ve got the oars… Okay, so maybe you’re in some tiny, wooden rowboat in the middle of a great, big ocean. But you can still steer the thing. You can go anywhere, do anything.”

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

“Oh.” Juniper feels the hot flare in the line between them, fierce and defiant. Is that what mother’s love is like?a thing with teeth?

“What, like fate?” It’s the first thing Agnes has said since they stepped outside, and both her sisters flinch from the venom of it. “Like destiny?” Fate is a story people tell themselves so they can believe everything happens for a reason, that the whole awful world is fitted together like some perfect machine, with blood for oil and bones for brass. That every child locked in her cellar or girl chained to her loom is in her right and proper place.

She doesn’t much care for fate.

An officer arrives twice a day to hang a pail of something whitish and congealed inside her cell. Grits, Juniper thinks, or the aggrieved ghost a grit might leave behind if it was murdered in cold blood.

It hurts even to think it. They came back for me. She feels something snap in her chest, as if her heart is a broken bone poorly set, which has to break again before it can heal right.

The problem with saving someone, Bella thinks, is that they so often refuse to remain saved. They careen back out into the perilous world, inviting every danger and calamity, quite careless of the labor it took to rescue them in the first place.

That evening Miss Lee feeds them a cabbage-and-ham stew which Juniper doubts has done more than meet a ham once in passing.

She thinks how very tiresome it is to love and be loved. She can even risk her life properly, because it no longer belongs solely to her.

Questland by Carrie Vaughn

She chuckled nervously. “Yeah, I suppose we all like to think we’ll be Captain America, but most of us are just on the street trying to dodge falling buildings.”

“Why not be Captain America?” I said, too tired to be angry but too annoyed to keep my mouth shut. “He was just a guy on the street, at the start.”

Iron Gold by Pierce Brown

A new wound can take a body. Opening an old one can claim a soul.

“It is my duty as a free man to read so I’m not blind being lead around by my nose.”

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.

I feel like a kid who wished for a lizard and woke up to a dragon sitting on the lawn.

“I know it may be impossible to believe now, when everything is dark and broken, but you will survive this pain, little one. Pain is a memory. You will live and you will struggle and you will find joy. And you will remember your family from this breath to your dying days, because love does not fade. Love is the stars, and its light carries on long after death.”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

There are more audiobooks than print books in this month’s selections. That has more to do with me reading more ARCs than usual, and I don’t have access to final versions of those to quote from. Or the book being so good that I just don’t know what to quote from (thanks, Ozark Dogs). As always, when it comes to audiobooks, I’m guessing the best I can at the punctuation, etc.

Backpacking Through Bedlam by Seanan McGuire

Family is complicated. Peach cobbler, on the other hand, is refreshingly simple.

“The laws of physics aren’t negotiable.”

Darius laughed, and the sound was loud and joyous as he set his hands back on the wheel. “Sure they are. There’s no law that’s not negotiable, if you know how to get your shoulder against it and push.”

Always be polite to she shapeshifting super predator. It’s a simple rule of life, but a good one all the same.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way more than I liked real ones, but you can’t have one without the other.

You may have noticed that when I do manage to care, I’m a pessimist.

The Book That No One Wanted to Read by Richard Ayoade

Might I suggest getting on good terms with the capybara? This is just about the friendliest mammal you could meet. Native to Central and South America, they eat grass, weigh up to 150 pounds, and look like someone pushed a kangaroo’s head through a squirrel’s tail. They have dry skin and swim to a high standard.

Us books need to be seen. We need to be held. We need to be heard. I think that’s why children make the best readers, because they know that these things are also true of them.

Problems with invisibility include people bumping into you, and not coming out well in photos.

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

People talk about grief as emptiness, but it’s not empty. It’s full. Heavy. Not an absence to fill. A weight to pull. Your skin caught on hooks chained to rough boulders made of all the futures you thought you’d have.

The problem with knowing people too well is that their words stop meaning anything and their silences start meaning everything.

That’s all science is. A collection of the best answers we have right now. It’s always open to revision. Yesterday’s fact is today’s question and tomorrow has an answer we don’t know yet.

So he did what you do when you’re heartbroken and have a time machine—something stupid.

…time travel is very bad at fixing mistakes. What it’s very good at is creating even worse mistakes.

That’s what love can do for you if you let it: build a person out of all your broken pieces. It doesn’t matter if the stitches show. The stitches, the scars just prove you earned it.

This is how you discover who someone is. Not the success. Not the result. The struggle. The part between the beginning and the ending that is the truth of life.

Is there a word for a thing you know you absolutely shouldn’t do, that would be wrong in every way that matters to you, but that you’re pretty sure you’re going to do anyway? Or is that just—human?

The Widower’s Two-Step by Rick Riordan

His eyebrows went up. His mouth softened. His eyes cast farther afield for something to latch on to. Nostalgia mode. I had maybe five minutes when he might be open to questions.

Not that drunks have predictable emotional cycles, but they do follow a brand of chaos theory that makes sense once you’ve been around enough of them, or been made an alumni yourself.

You could hear the stereo from the downstairs neighbors just fine. They were playing Metallica. Playing isn’t really the right verb for Metallica, I guess. Grinding, maybe. Extruding.

We zipped along with the front trunk rattling and the left rear wheel wobbling on its bad disc. I patted the VW’s dashboard.

“Not this trip. Break down on the way home, please.”

Of course I told the VW that every trip. VWs are gullible that way.

The Deal Goes Down by Larry Beinhart

Trees fight for life. If you climb to the high, rocky places, where the soil’s been stripped by the beating of the winds, day and night, you’ll see the pines hanging on, their roots crawling into the splits between the stones and wrapping tight around them, like the crew of a ghost sailing ship, desperately clinging forever to the lines as they ride through an eternal storm.

This love of life that we go on about, how precious it is and such, is just a mechanism. Spiders and flies, blades of grass, and bacteria have it. Any form of life that doesn’t have it gets wiped out. Ipso facto, it’s built in, like spark plugs in an internal combustion engine. We spend endless hours wondering if our life will be short or long, good or bad, worthwhile or worthless, then death comes, and we have no idea at all.

It was a 9mm. I didn’t know the brand. I knew it could kill me. The name of the manufacturer didn’t make much difference. They were all sufficiently reliable that I wouldn’t bet my life on a malfunction. Whichever one of them this was, it would kill me as dead as any of the others. For that matter, the fact that it was an automatic rather than a revolver and that it was a 9mm rather than a .38, a .44, or a 45 was irrelevant in the immediate context.

I felt I had to say something, some explanation of the distance that remained. That we—that I—retained. “Young men run on passion. Old men are filled with broken shards of memories. As if we’ve been looking at our lives in mirrors, all along, through all those years, lots of them forgotten, some lost, most of them broken, nothing really true or completely whole is left, just all those bits and pieces, sharp edges, and silver peeling off the backs. That’s all there is.”

The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise by Colleen Oakley

“Why is it called a grandfather clock and not a grandmother clock?” her eldest granddaughter, Poppy, asked once. “Because only a man would find the need to announce it every time he performed his job as required,” Louise replied.

Morning Star by Pierce Brown

Much as I enjoy using four hundred million credits’ worth of technology make me into a flying human tank, sometimes warm pants are more valuable.

“You tell anyone I cried, I’ll find a dead fish, put it in a sock, hide it in your room, and let it putrefy.”

In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that’s left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines.

Justice isn’t about fixing the past, it’s about fixing the future. We’re not fighting for the dead. We’re fighting for the living. And for those who aren’t yet born.

“I always think about how life would have been if Eo never died. The children I would have had. What I would have named them.” I smile distantly.

“I would have grown old. Watched Eo grow old. And I would have loved her more with each new scar, with each new year even as she learned to despise our small life. I would have said farewell to my mother, maybe my brother, sister. And if I was lucky, one day when Eo’s hair turned gray, before it began to fall out and she began to cough, I would hear the shift of rocks over my head on the drill and that would be it. She would have sent me to the incinerators and sprinkled my ashes, then our children would have done the same. And the clans would say we were happy and good and raised bloodydamn fine children. And when those children died, our memory would fade, and when their children died, it would be swept away like the dust we become, down and away to the long tunnels. It would have been a small life,” I say with a shrug, “but I would have liked it.”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

I clearly read a lot of ARCs this month, most of what I can quote from here are audiobooks. There’s a theme about books and reading, which is nice, there hasn’t been one for a while, however accidental those themes are, I like when I can find one.

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

Wasn’t sanity like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?

Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane

Don’t knock voyeurism. American culture wouldn’t exist without it.

We walked off the bridge and headed east along the river path. It was early evening and the air was the color of scotch and the trees had a burnished glow, the smoky dark gold of the sky contrasted starkly with the explosion of cherry reds, lime greens, and bright yellows in the canopies of leaves stretched above us.

You Took the Last Bus Home by Brian Bilston

Yeah, no. If I started I wouldn’t be able to stop.

Justice Calling by Annie Bellet

A girl needs options. To me, video games are like shoes. But with more pixels and a plot.
“We could always nerd the guy to death, I suppose,” Levi said.

“Ooh, yeah, new torture technique. We’ll make him watch nothing but Highlander II and Star Trek V!”

Levi hit the brakes and executed the quickest three- point turn I ever want to experience ever, or make that never, again.

Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide (to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons) by Quenby Olson

(Diana’s husband, the sort who lived behind a newspaper or a book or any sort of reading wall that was meant to deter people from approaching in an oh- look- he’s- reading- I’ll- not- bother- him sort of way. This, of course, did not always work, as some people [re: Diana] took the presence of reading material to mean that the person reading was obviously bored and most likely pining away for the company of others [i.e., Diana when she was in need of a receptacle for her general complaints about life and motherhood] and would certainly have no compunction against setting aside their book with eagerness to listen.)

With a sigh that carried a lifetime’s weight of disrespect and disregard and several other words beginning with a similar prefix, Mildred picked up the last of her drooping toast and pushed her chair back from the table.

Mornings were never welcome. Mildred understood their place in the world; everything must have a beginning of some sort, and things like days and weeks and years and even time could not be exempt from that. But mornings weighed on her like a burden, like a trial to be endured before she could arrive at the legitimate part of the day, with the sun fully risen and the birds already digesting their ill-gotten worms.

“So.” Mr. Wiggan looked at her. But, oh, the amount of words, the pages of description and venting of thoughts and feelings and sympathies in that single syllable.

She didn’t much care for many of the books in the study. Neither her sister nor her brother-in-law were great readers, and so the volumes stored there served more as accessories to the room rather than how Mildred believed a personal library should exist: as pieces of the curator’s character, bound and shelved but available to be read again and again, like memories brought out and pored over until they were rounded down as smooth as pebbles.

Did one read books while travelling? Of course people read books while traveling. Books had no boundaries, no sense of home or place. They were the entire world, printed in a form one could slip into one’s pocket (Well, if the pockets were large enough, which they generally were not. Mildred made a pact with herself then and there to make certain that every future gown and apron she sewed for herself came complete with at least two pockets large enough and sturdy enough to carry most medium-sized volumes.)

The sound that issued from Mr. Simonon’s throat was not something that could easily be transcribed into written English. (German, no doubt, would have a word in its lexicon capable of expressing the particular kind of pain he was experiencing. But as Mr. Simonon was not familiar with that specific branch of Teutonic languages, his unintelligible and agonized warbling would have to suffice.)

Now that Mildred was sufficiently fed and rested after her exhaustion the previous day, her own anxiety took that as a sign that it should make a return, as if it feared she might be lonely without it.

The Green Ember by S.D. Smith

Growing up is terribly wonderful. But often it’s also wonderfully terrible.

He believed he had always tried to achieve peace and was sad that he so often had to find it at the end of his sword.

Death at Paradise Palms by Steph Broadribb

No one shouts to say Lizzie shouldn’t be there. They barely glance at her. That’s the benefit of being in your sixties – you’re seen as unthreatening and assumed to be doing what you’re meant to where you’re meant to be doing it. As she’s recently started to discover, assumptions like that make it so much easier to break the rules.

Golden Son by Pierce Bron

Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.

I would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love.

Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.

He always thinks because I’m reading, I’m not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.

Please Return to the Lands of Luxury by Jon Tilton

“Books don’t just have stories on the inside.” Chloe smiled. “Some wear is beautiful. It shows the journey to this very moment.”

Adult Assembly Required by Abbi Wasman

When the body experiences a sudden shock, it actually freezes for one twenty-fifth of a second and then deploys intense psychological curiosity, mobilizing every neuron and nerve, every sense, every possible input to work out exactly what just happened. In a microsecond or two the brain gathers the intel, sorts it, analyzes it, cross-references it, and is ready to issue directions for what to do next. It’s a miracle, really, and while it might not definitively prove the existence of God, it certainly deserves an enthusiastic round of applause.

As always, the food made everything better. Dogs and good food, universal improvers.

“I expected adult life to be long stretches of mastery, occasionally interrupted by a steep learning curve of chaos and excitement. But I learned recently it’s the other way around.” She looked at Laura and shrugged. “But what can you do?”

Laura narrowed her eyes, “You’re very philosophical.”

Nina looked around for the waitress. “Nah. I’m clutching at straws like you. I’m simply older and more resigned to it.”

“To what?”

“To life.”

“You’re resigned to life?”

“Better than resigning from it.”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

One thing I’ve learned lately is that if I don’t get this done right away at the beginning of the month, it slips away from me. Good to know, I guess, eh? On with these lines from my February reads…

The Hero Interviews by Andi Ewington

It’s worth noting that ‘success’ in the adventuring business is usually measured by whether you’re still breathing after completing an adventure. Those who aren’t successful typically wind up dead.

“My father taught me that you always get out of life what you put into it. If you’re only paying a Dwarf in crumbs, then you’re only going to end up with a pissed- off Dwarf who is still hungry.”

Balstaff: … I just hoped someone would come to my rescue before I froze to death— or worse.”

Me: “What’s worse than freezing to death?”

Balstaff: “Being eaten alive by hungry Snow Wolves.”

Danger is just death’s distant cousin once removed— many an adventurer has fallen foul of it.”

Bad Memory by Jim Cliff

“Discretion is my middle name,” I said. “It’s a shame it doesn’t fit on my business cards.”

The dealer button moved around to me and I picked up the cards and gave them a shuffle. The six of us fitted around Scott’s kitchen table so long as everyone breathed in and nobody minded the odd elbow in the ribs.

Her glasses were designer – I could tell because the designer’s name was discreetly embossed on the frame. Her suit didn’t have any names on it, but I figured clothes designers were just more humble

“You’re lucky you caught me in a good mood. I just got a hole in one on the 17th. What is it?”

I resisted the urge to say ‘it’s when the ball goes in the hole on the first hit, but that’s not important right now’ and asked my question.

The Silk Empress by Josepf Matulich

“So, that’s what air pirates really look like.” They resembled none of the flamboyant descriptions of the penny dreadfuls he’d grown up on. He’d expected striped pants, velvet coats, and satin sashes. This group looked the type to rob pig herds on the way to Newcastle.

His mother would have approved of his lack of possessions, a sign of spiritual freedom. He tried to feel in his heart the way she did, but he would have still have preferred to have had a few more books.

He hurt. His right leg felt to be filled with blades and broken glass. One of his arms ached to the bones from shoulder to fingertips; he couldn’t feel or move the other. A slow catalogue of all his injuries actually made him chuckle. I should be happy to hurt so much, he thought. You don’t feel anything when you’re dead.

With the long guns they carried, seven of them could shoot Algie as he engaged the eighth. He had been shot once already this year, and he’d like to keep it that way at least until Christmas.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Alan Conway’s home was a couple of Framlingham and it would’ve been almost impossible to find without Sat-Nav. I’ve lived my whole life in a city roads actually go somewhere, because frankly they can’t afford not to.

You’d have thought that after twenty years editing Murder Mysteries I’d have noticed when I found myself in the middle of one.

It had all come to me at Paddington Station. The extraordinary moment that all of them must have felt–Poirot, Holmes, Whimsey, Marple, Morse–but which their authors had never fully explained. What was it like for them? A slow process, like constructing a jigsaw? Or did it come in a rush, one last turn in a toy kaleidoscope, when all the colors and shapes tumbled and twisted into each other forming a recognizable image?

Finley Donovan Jumps the Gun by Elle Cosimano

My phone vibrated again as I reached for the keyboard.

Vero: I hope you remembered gloves….

I dug my mittens from the pockets of my coat and drew them on, wishing I’d been prepared with something a little more Temperance Brennan and less Bernie Sanders.

A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

“A child’s portion of Don Julio,” I said.

I always order alcohol that way–stole it from an old mentor, a cop long dead. But he used it for food because he had diverticulitis. I use it for alcohol because I’m Irish. But that’s not entirely ture. I’m also half Jewish. On my mother’s side. I’m half Jew, half Mick, all ish.

We both stared at the little hip of ice on his desk, at $289,000 worth of sparkling carbon. Which up close, under a microscope, looked like a palace.

It was bumper to bumper, thousands of cars jammed together, going nowhere and somewhere, reaching speeds as high as five miles per hour, ten if we were lucky; and even with the recent rain, the white smog, which we live in all the time, was especially thick,and you would never know that just a few miles to the east the whole valley basin was ringed by beautiful mountains, the San Gabirels.

But they were obscured by the white filth, and it’s old news, of course, but we are forced in this modern life, to always hold two ideas in our mind at once: one, the natural world is beautiful, and two, we are destroying it.

The Foundling, the Heist, and the Volcano by K.R.R. Lockhaven

“Why did you bury the treasure?” Azure asked.

Wakeman looked to her with an extremely confused expression. Even Mr. Threepbrush, who was usually over- the- top respectful, looked at her like she had just said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.

“Uh… cause that’s what one does with treasure.” Wakeman couldn’t keep the condescension from his voice.

“Aye, Captain,” Mr. Threepbrush added, “what other choice did he have?”

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Steel is power. Money is power. But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.

I learn more when I make mistakes, so long as they don’t kill me.

Pocket Apocalypse by Seanan McGuire

Airplanes: essentially buses that fly, and hence have the potential to drop out of the sky at any moment, spreading your insides—which will no doubt become your outsides sometime during the collision—across whatever you happen to have been flying over. Since we were flying mostly over ocean, I was sure the sharks would appreciate our sacrifice.

“Family matters more than anything else in this world, Family doesn’t have to love you. Family doesn’t even have to like you. But when you need them, family has to have your back.”

Broken by Don Winslow

Behavior that was cute when you were in your twenties becomes aggravating in your thirties, pathetic in your forties and tragic in your fifties.

“father” and “mother” are verbs before they’re nouns.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Time to kick off Year 2 of this series!

Pieces of Eight by Peter Hartog

A wintry blast welcomed me as I stepped into the frigid February night. The cold and snow had kept most reasonable folks indoors. You know, the ones that worked reasonable jobs, with reasonable hours and reasonable pay?

Two of Stentstrom’s people wearing plastic gear arrived to perform a thorough scan of the room using an alphabet soup of forensic devices that detected everything from fingerprints, clothing fragments and chemicals to shoe scuff marks and old boogers.

The connections were there, but remained vague shapes, too faint to see. It was like collecting breadcrumbs in the middle of the woods. At midnight. And I was blindfolded.

I gaped at her. The consultant folded her hands before her waist, returning my glare with a serene expression. That’s when the subtlety of her ploy dawned on me. Because I’m slow like that. Like a boulder rolling uphill.

Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan

That was his way. He was thorough; he was meticulous. Any other way, he’d be dead, and getting killed on the job was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane

L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it’s simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won’t have to hear the screams of the drowning.

We met when we were both majoring in Space Invaders with a Pub Etiquette minor at the Happy Harbor Campus of UMass/Boston.

Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire

She had a pretty mother with long dark hair and a laugh like watermelon on a hot summer afternoon, sweet and good and oddly sticky in its own way. Her mother’s laughter stuck to you, and it made everything better for hours and hours, even after it was over.

The baby came on time, as babies sometimes will, and loudly, as babies always do.

The Perception of Dolls by Anthony Croix, Edited by Russell Day

“You saw what you were expecting to see, and that was after we’d been talking about fakery and false impressions. Believe me, if we’d been playing poker, you’d be broke, and convinced I’d won fair and square.”

“So, I’m a mug?”

“No, you just see the world behaving the way you think it will. In fairness so do I, but I see a world full of card cheats and untrustworthy witnesses. Including my own senses.”

“Whatever was in that house had agency and intelligence. It was playful. But then so are children who pull the legs off spiders.”

Half-Off Ragnorak by Author

Where there’s one lindworm, there’s probably another. This is a fact of the natural world, much like, “don’t put your hand in the manticore” and “try not to lick the neurotoxic amphibians.”

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

Toronto is too small a city to get divorced in, really. My recommendation, if you live in Toronto and your marriage is not working, is to stick it out or move away.

It was a classic tale, and one I knew well, having talked many friends through near-identical scenarios in recent years. For straight women in their late twenties, getting cheated on by your partner is basically jury duty.

I cried, feeling oddly empowered by the depths to which I was sinking, that I could be this pathetic and still breathing was an achievement in its way.

The Wizard’s Butler by Nathan Lowell

He nodded with the devilish grin of a ten-year-old who knows he has a frog in his pocket but nobody else suspects.

How to Astronaut: An Insider’s Guide to Leaving Planet Earth by Terry Virts

OK, I’m not claustrophobic, but if there was ever a reason in my life to panic it would be now.” I figured I had two choices: a) panic, in which case I’d be strapped in, unable to move, with absolutely nothing to do about it, or b) not panic, in which case I’d be strapped in, unable to move, with absolutely nothing to do about it. I chose option b.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Since high school, I’ve collected quotations like philatelists collect tiny bits of paper. In every book I read I scratch out copies of far too many quotations for me to use in my posts. Last year, I was inspired by Witty and Sarcastic Book Club’s annual Quotables: Words that Stuck with Me post, but there’s no way that I could just do an annual version, it’d be far too long.

So, I started a monthly (usually) version. They’re likely my favorite posts each month (at least in the top 3 in any given month). I don’t know how many of my readers dig these, but I do, so they’re sticking around.

Here are the lines from December that really stuck with me.

Radio Radio by Ian Shane

Yeah, there’s no question. This woman thinks that I am a moron. The sad thing about that is that I’ve been presenting her with plenty of evidence that I am. I’ve gone from being “interesting charming guy” to Boo Radley in less than six seconds. I’ve lost my focus and my home court advantage. I need to get my cool back in short order.

The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz

“Moxham was strikingly beautiful, the sort of place that turns up in jigsaw puzzles or Harry Potter films.”

Sacrifices by Jamie Schultz

He chambered a round.

“For ghosts?” Karyn asked.

“I ain’t willing to rule out bullets just on principle alone. They might work, and I got nothing else.”

“Plus, it makes you feel better.”

“That, too.”

“If I live through this, you’re a lifesaver,” she said to Bobby.

“You sure this is a good idea?” Nail asked.

Anna gave him a bland look. “It’s been months since we were in the same area code as a good idea. This is just what we’re stuck with.”

Secrets Typed in Blood by Stephen Spotswood

Want to see a prosecutor salivate? Had them a slam-dunk case that’ll generate good press for everyone who touches it.

To ensure that, I’d slipped out to use the facilities and, instead of powdering my nose, placed calls to The Times, The Associated Press, and the New York City Office of Reuters. I decided to save Time Magazine for the morning, they were a weekly after all, and could wait.

My boss rolled her eyes. Well, really just one eye, the false one remained more or less glaring at me.

In the kind of stories that Holly wrote, someone was always having a shock and the blood drains from their face. I’d never seen it happen in real life, not until that moment. In a blink, our client’s face went the sickly pale of cabbage and corpses.

“It’s possible,” she said. “Though it would be rather imprudent.”

“Three murders under his belt? I don’t think our guy is the prudent type.”

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

“Well, I suppose one could see how you could see that. Only if you don’t know what a monster looks like, of course.”

What does a monster look like? Jam asked.

Her mother focused on her, cupping her cheek in a chalky hand. “Monsters don’t look like anything, doux-doux. That’s the whole point. That’s the whole problem.”

“Angels aren’t pretty pictures in old holy books, just like monsters aren’t ugly pictures. It’s all just people, doing hard things or doing bad things. But is all just people, our people.”

Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire

There’s something to be said for keeping your friends around you when things get bad. It may not be good for their life expectancies, but it’s sure as hell easier on the heart.

When you decide to be the immovable object standing in front of the unstoppable force, you’d better pray that you’re right about being immovable, and they’re wrong about being unstoppable.

Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell

Kindred Spirits

Elena couldn’t remember the first time she saw a Star Wars movie . . . in the same way she couldn’t remember the first time she saw her parents. Star Wars had just always been there. There was a stuffed Chewbacca in her crib.

The original trilogy were her dad’s favorite movies—he practically knew them by heart—so when Elena was little, like four or five, she’d say they were her favorite movies, too. Because she wanted to be just like him.

And then, as she got older, the movies started to actually sink in. Like, they went from something Elena could recite to something she could feel. She made them her own. And then she’d kept making them her own. However Elena changed or grew, Star Wars seemed to be there for her in a new way.

Winter Songs for Summer

Summer was curled into a ball on her dorm room floor.

Or as close as she could get to a ball.

She wasn’t one of those girls who could collapse into nothing. She was curled into more of a boomerang shape. A miserable boomerang.

She should probably move onto the bed, but it felt more pathetic to lie on the floor, and the floor was closer to her speakers.

She had a small, all-in-one stereo with a dual cassette player and a radio and a three-CD carousel. It was her prize possession; she’d saved up for six months to buy it.

In the old days, when Summer wanted to listen to one song over and over, she’d have to hit rewind on the tape deck and then guess when to stop. Or sometimes she’d make a tape with the same song dubbed over and over—that was time-consuming.

Now she could put in a CD and press repeat track, and listen to the same song infinitely without ever getting up—without ever having to shift out of her misery.

It had really revolutionized this breakup.

“Happy songs are the saddest thing to listen to when you’re unhappy,” the guy said matter-of-factly. “That’s just physics.”

“That’s not physics.”

“They break your heart because they make you think about the last time you were happy.” He took another bite. “Also, don’t argue with me about physics. I’m a physics major. What’s your major?”

“Secondary education.”

“Okay, I won’t argue with you about that.”

E.B. White on Dogs edited by Martha White

I like to read books on dog training. Being the owner of dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot.

I can’t quite figure out why I am so busy all the time; it seems silly and is against my principles.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Things got away from me last month, and I didn’t get anything put together for October. And now I’m late with November, too. I tell you, I’m halfway tempted to fire my staff. But, as I’m the staff, I’d have to replace myself afterward—and that’d be awkward. I might as well just catch up and try to do better at the end of December.

Amari and the Great Game by B.B. Alston

“Amari,’ says Maria. “It’s not your job to save the world every summer,” I don’t have a choice!”

Pretty please?” I ask.

“Fine, fine. Anything for a fellow human.”

I lean in, lowering my voice to a whisper. Just so you know, we don’t usually call each other humans.

Tiny scratches his bald head, his confused eyes flashing bright yellow before changing back. “But why? You are human, yes?”

I nod. “It’s just… we assume everyone we meet is human, so there isn’t any reason to mention it.”

His shoulders droop dramatically. “So many things to remember to fit into human world.”

Working It Out by Jo Platt

I read her text twice, acknowledging it to be actually a rather impressive composition; fewer than one hundred words and with more triggers than a rifle range.

6 Ripley Avenue by Noelle Holten

Just like her, the public were seekers of truth, only sometimes they needed a nudge in the right direction.

Racing the Light by Robert Crais

“Why would Josh ignore her?”

“Because he can. He’s self-absorbed, arrogant, irresponsible, and rotten with privilege.”

“Oh. The usual reasons.”

I wondered what other secrets he kept, and if those secrets had driven him away form his home and his family and Ryan.

Ryan probably wouldn’t like the answer.

Adele probably wouldn’t like the answer, either.

The people who hired me to find someone they love, almost never wanted the truth.

And when I found the truth, I often wished I hadn’t found it.

Pike answered on the first ring. I’ve never called Joe Pike when he didn’t answer the first ring. Pike would have to be dead in a ditch not to answer the first ring, and then he’d probably answer the second ring.

Pike said, “Zongtong.”

I said, “Okay. I give.”

“It’s the word for president in Standard Chinese.”

“You don’t speak Chinese.”

“Jon Stone.”

Of course. Stone was multilingual. He was fluent in Spanish, Korean, Arabic, Russian, and now, apparently, Chinese. And these were only the languages I had personally heard him speak. Some guys were born annoying.

She sounded as lost as yesterday’s kiss…

The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo, Chi-Young Kim (Translator)

“How old are you, princess?”

“I’m six.”

Six. Hornclaw already knew, but now that she hears how the girl says it, it feels as though she would remember the girl’s babyish pronunciation forever. The moisture in her words never evaporating.

The Ophelia Network by Mur Lafferty

Frankly it was a little disappointing that the male hackers weren’t hoodie-and-fingerless-glove-wearing unwashed young adults constantly looking over their shoulders. The women weren’t gorgeous Goth chicks, either. Everyone looked boring and normal. Each was dressed professionally, if a little rumpled, as they worked into the night.

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

There is no practice more vexing than that of authors describing in travel for the edification of people who have already traveled in coaches. As I must adhere to form, however, I will simply list a series of phrases for the unlikely reader who has never gone anywhere: thin eggshell dawn-soaked curtains stained with materials unknown to science; rattling fit to grind bones to powder; the ripe stench of horse and driver and bog.

Now I have fulfilled my literary duties…

The girl who had broken off from the line was twelve, with a moon face which was so beautiful I had no notion whether she should be congratulated or censured for taking matters a trifle too far.

I hope that the epitaph of the human race when the world ends will be: Here perished a species which lived to tell stories.

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman

The second date was, if anything, even better than the first. They have been to Brighton to watch a Polish film. Donna hadn’t realized there were Polish films, though obviously there must be. In a country that size, someone is going to make a film once in a while.

Joyce finally cracks. “So where are we off to, then?”

“To meet an old friend of mine,” says Elizabeth. “Viktor.”

“We used to have a milkman called Victor,” says Joyce. “Any chance it’s the same Victor?”

“Very possible. Was your milkman also the head of the Leningrad KGB in the eighties?”

“Different Victor,” says Joyce, “Though they finish milk-round, very early, don’t they? So perhaps he was doing two jobs?”

“It’s the people, in the end, isn’t it?…It’s always the people, You can move halfway around the world to find your perfect life, move to Australia if you like, but it always comes down to the people you meet.”

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

“My mind’s on the job,” I said defensively, plucking the cherry from my drink. “Really. I swear.”

“Uh-huh.” Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Do we have have the ‘don’t lie to the telepath’ talk again? It won’t take long. I say ‘don’t lie to the telepath, it never works,’ you glare at me, and then you go find something you can hit.”

“Finding something I can hit is the plan.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said flippantly. “I’m the bad thing that happens to other people.”

Sometimes I think the universe listens for lines like that one, so that it can punish the people who use them.

Screwed by Eoin Colfer

You see, laddie. I’m a businessman. And what we got here is a business opportunity.

Except he says opera-toonity. For some reason he can’t pronounce the word right and I wouldn’t mind but he works it into every second sentence. Irish Mike Madden says opera-toonity more than the Pope says Jesus. And the Pope says Jesus a lot, especially when people sneak up on him.

Little things like that really get to me. I can take a straight sock to the jaw, but someone tapping his nails on a table or repeatedly mispronouncing a word drives me crazy. I once slapped a coffee out of a guy’s hand on the subway because he was breathing into the cup before every sip. It was like sitting beside Darth Vader on his break. And [’ll tell you something else: three people applauded.

He doesn’t know about my aversion to killing people, so is convinced that I can’t let him live. If Shea survives, he is done in this world of shadows, but Freckles would never stop coming. He’s Irish, like me, and we know all about holding grudges. When it comes to vendettas, the Irish make the Sicilians look Canadian.

Desert Star by Michael Connelly

Ballard told herself not to be annoyed with Bosch. She knew that putting him on a team did not make him a team player. That was not in his DNA.

He knew this was a pessimistic view of the world, but fifty years of toiling in the fields of blood had left him without much hope. He knew that the dark engine of murder would never run low on fuel. Not in his lifetime. Not in anyone’s.

Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan

“Sounds like a really good plan to me,” Hadrian declared, “Royce?”
“I like any plan where I don’t die a horrible death.”

“Besides, this shouldn’t be a problem for you, of all people. I am certain you have stolen from occupied homes before.”

“Not ones where the owner can swallow me in a single bite.”

“So we’ll have to be extra quiet now, won’t we?”

Missing Pieces by Peter Grainger

People do not tell the police all they know for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes those reasons are perfectly sound. But we can be certain of one thing: if the police officer concerned suspects you of concealing information, he or she will assume the worst. It comes, as they say, with the territory.

The maverick intuitive geniuses on the television screen are wonderful entertainment, of course. But it’s the people who keep lists that solve cases in the real world.

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Having a cat is one small step from having two cats, and to be a single woman within a syllable of fifty in possession of two cats is tantamount to declaring life over. Catherine Standish has had her share of scary moments but has survived each of them, and is not about to surrender now.

She started drawing up a mental list of everyone she didn’t trust, and had to stop immediately. She didn’t have all day.

“We don’t like being out of the loop.”

“You’re always out of the loop. The loop’s miles away. Nearest you’ll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel. I thought you were aware of that.”

At the bar he ordered a large scotch for himself, because he wanted to give the impression of being kind of a lush, and also because he wanted a large scotch.

Wistful Ascending by JCM Berne

He was wearing a close-fitting jumpsuit. The yellow was somewhere between neon and actively fluorescent, with accents in a metallic purple rumored to cause an assortment of mental illnesses if a human stared at it too long.

First lesson: Space bears were not sticklers for personal hygiene.

The boy sighed. “My name is long and stupid. But you can call me Rinth.”

“I’m sure it’s not stupid.”

“Amarinthalytics. It sounds like a subject in school that everybody fails.”

“Tell him I said hello. No hard feelings.”

She cocked her head and looked at him with her blank yellow eyes. “Really?”

Rohan shrugged. “I mean, I’m not eager to be best friends, but I also don’t want him worried that I’m going to walk down the hall and pull his testicles out of his body through his ears.”

“That is a very vivid description of vengeance to come from a man with no hard feelings.”

“I’m still an il’Drach Hybrid, you know. Our emotional milieu is mostly made up of hard feelings.

“That is your mantra? ‘Be nice’? Not, for example, ‘Be good’?”

“Yeah. Once you try to do the right thing, the moral thing, you find all sorts of ways to justify whatever. Oh, this action here is cruel, but it’s for the greater good, so it’s right. But you can’t argue with nice.”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

It’s the lass full week of October, it’s probably past time for me to get this out of the “Drafts” folder.

Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire

But that’s Faerie for you. Making sense is something that happens to other people.

It felt like I was standing outside this scene and watching it unfold, like none of this had anything to do with me. Like I should have been able to smile politely, say, “No, thank you,” and walk away, leaving everything exactly as it was before I got out of bed this morning.

Travel by Bullet by John Scalzi

“In this case something called ‘Magic Beanz.’ And that’s spelled like whoever named it failed the third grade.

I nodded at this. “It’s not a legitimate cryptocurrency if it’s not badly spelled. ”

“Drive me nuts,” Mason said. “It’s like people naming their kid Ashley or Braden, but then spelling the name with six “Y”s. It doesn’t make the kid special, it just means they won’t be able to spell their own name until they’re in high school.”

The Days of Tao by Wesley Chu

Once you spend three thousand years in the same place, you are pretty much done with it forever.

An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris

It’s always something to recognize, how still the dead are. Ten minutes ago he’d moved and breathed and thought and wanted, and he’d done his best to kill us. Now all that didn’t matter to him.

Snowstorm in August by Marshall Karp

“It’s called a multipurpose subsea vehicle,” our pilot, Captain Jim Charles, told us, “but I like to think of it as the kind of watercraft Dr. Frankenstein would have built if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with dead bodies.”

The line was probably a standard part of his orientation speech, but he delivered it so deadpan that both Redwood and I responded with the genuine laughs he was expecting.

Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher

It felt unreal that she could be dead. She had always been so powerful, so sure, so wise. Not to mention so paranoid that she did her own dental work.

He took a breath to brace himself for what came next. He could show no fear, no hesitation , and most of all, no pride. You can’t have pride and appropriately handle kids at the same time. It was some kind of universal, or perhaps cosmic, rule.

…coaxing the jeep to life. It sounded like it should be in a hospital bed surrounded by its loved ones, but it started moving somehow…It didn’t help that all he could smell was whiskey and cigarettes, and whatever the opposite of that new-car smell was.

Hell and Back by Craig Johnson

Most live in fear of dying alone, but it was something he understood—that there are things that you can only do by yourself, besides, we are never truly alone. There’s always something out there waiting, it is the nature of life and the nature of death.

For We Are Many by Dennis E. Taylor

“The cat’s A.I. was realistic, right down to the total lack of loyalty.”

“Just when you start to get ahead in the rat race, the universe delivers bigger rats.”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

I’m a couple of days late with this, it took a bit of choosing (and I had to verify selections from a couple of ARCs, too). Here are the lines from August that really stood out to me.

Hell of a Mess by Nick Kolakowski

Don’t worry, sweetie, she’d told him on the way out the door. Anything goes wrong, I got the gun!

What about not killing? he’d retorted— because she was trying to become more Zen, right? Kinder and gentler and all that other crap?

I’ll just shoot them in the kneecap! she said before the door slammed behind her.

His wife had a funny concept of Zen.

The assassin raised a hand. “Sorry, I have this medical condition, it makes me draw the nearest firearm whenever I hear the word ‘Bitcoin.’”

“When did you become an explosives expert?” the assassin asked.

“I saw ‘The Hurt Locker’ at least twice,” Bill said, snipping a wider gap.

Summerland by Michael Chabon

The fundamental truth: a baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.

Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker

I was in the waiting area, drinking from a bottle of mineral water when Art first walked in. He wore a forest green velvet jacket and bright mustard trousers, and darted through the clinic’s duck-egg like a greenfinch. The world didn’t dim around him, my heart didn’t skip a beat, but I felt as if I could know him, and could anticipate his nature if only I knew his voice. He sat directly opposite me on a plush red chair, and after a single scan around the waiting room, picked up a copy of National Geographic and started to read. I knew who he was, even if he didn’t immediately know me. Art was at once a mystery and a map.

I purged the kitchen of potted carcasses. Despite them all sitting in a row and sharing the same light, each plant had died in its own discrete way. Most had shrivelled back into a gnarled stump, and others had become mushy, sinking down like a creamy concertina. Aubrey’s succulent had finally given up its last leaf, and the stalk stood obscenely naked, coiling towards the sun like an earthworm. I tossed them all into the composter and left the empty pots by the back door. I’d replace them with artificial plants later…

Plugged by Eoin Colfer

Everyone wants to kill me lately. It’s enough to make a fellow paranoid.

I am not qualified to deal with this. Why does everyone I meet seem to have mental problems?

Ah…but did they have mental problems before meeting you? Who’s the common denominator here, Dan?

I do not have mental problems! I say to the voice in my head, perfectly aware how damning it would sound were I to say it aloud.

The great Stephen King once wrote don’t sweat the small stuff, which I mulled over for long enough to realise that I don’t entirely agree with it. I get what he means: we all have enough major sorrow in our lives without freaking out over the day-today hangnails and such, but sometimes sweating the small stuff helps you make it through the big stuff.

When Sorrows Come by Seanan McGuire

Faerie’s relationship to physics is often casual at best, and sometimes it consists of Faerie promising to call when physics knows it never will.

Congratulations on the occasion of your marriage, and may the blessings piled upon your house be so vast the roof is in danger of collapse before you can get the wedding party to safety.

Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

If they couldn’t agree on which Sci Fi memes to deploy in conversation, how could they work together long enough to fix anything, solve anything, save anybody?

Out of Spite, Out of Mind by Scott Meyer

Shooting yourself in the foot has the same effect whether you do it to get out of the army or to kill a mosquito on your shoe.”

Case of the Missing Firefly by Chris McDonald

If this were a novel, Adam perhaps might’ve realised that he’d been holding his breath the whole time. As it was, his respiratory system had carried on as normal, collecting oxygen without his explicit command.

The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu

She had wanted to refuse the assignment but the terms he offered were too good to pass up: tax exemption for life and not going to jail for refusing her duke. Taishi was not a big fan of taxes or imprisonment.

Taishi had been so busy she kept forgetting to tell Faaru to put out a call for educators. The boy needed to know more than eight ways to throw a punch. She needed to hire teachers: philosophers, mathematicians, politicians … and probably someone to teach him how to dress himself. He would need to be versed in diplomacy, cultures, logistics, art, and etiquette. Half of a leader’s job was to not be an idiot.

The seconds ticked by. Taishi bided her time. In battle, only fools hurried, and they either learned or died learning.

Jian remembered [redacted] death-punching him in the chest, his veins feeling like they were scalding in hot oil. Everything was hazy after that. To be honest, part of him felt he owed his former master an apology: No one ever believed any war artist who claimed to know some form of death punch. Out ofall his masters, only Luda had boasted that knowledge, and the rest had teased him relentlessly about it. Being on the receiving end of a death touch was a pretty awful way to confirm its existence.

Unlike many war artists who had put forth tremendous effort to maintain a stoic expression at all times, Taishi suffered no qualms about vocalizing her feelings, and she preferred those under her to do the same. It was better to show fear than false courage. A soldier who showed fear—in moderation—was an alert and sharp soldier, and more likely to follow orders. Someone who was busy acting brave was preoccupied with the wrong thing.

Haaren leaned over the side and studied the row of vendor stalk “Everything is so cheap.”

“That’s because everyone’s so broke,” said Koteuni, “I’ve never seen so many unemployed soldiers and war artists waiting around in one place.”

“That’s what those dummies get for winning the war,” replied Qisami.

Burandin pointed at a recruiter off to the side enlisting soldiers. The crowd surrounding him looked like piranhas during a feed. “The army’s mustering again.”

Koteuni snorted. “To fight whom? There’s no one left.”

He shrugged. “There’s always someone to fight.”

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley

When Aja was a baby I’d watch her sleep, sometimes for an hour or more. Her face changed expressions with whatever dream she was having or with anything shifting in the room or inside her. She made errant noises and reached out now and again.

Sleeping, it seemed to me, was an act of innocence. That’s why I stayed awake after almost murdering [redacted ]. I knew that peaceful slumber was for babies, whereas only nightmares awaited a man like me.

One thing I had learned in high school was that in sports you always had to move in a direction that your opponent did not expect. From Ping-Pong to prizefighting, the man with the unexpected moves was the player most likely to win.

Police work is a kind of intellectual sport, like Go or chess. And sometimes you have to make a move to fool yourself, a move that will keep you from putting yourself in the enemy’s line of fire.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be. But when I try, the punctuation, etc. is just a guess).

Songbird by Peter Grainger

“How old is Michelle?” It doesn’t matter how you ask the question, whichever tense you go with sounds wrong. Reeve had concluded that to say “was” now, would be too soon, that’s all

The [remark about] fast cars were true without a doubt. He’d been in one or two of those with Catherine, and surviving the experience was enough to make you reconsider your rejection of the Christian faith.

There had been times, and not a few of them, when Waters had thought, “Why doesn’t he let that go? Why go out on a limb for something trivial? For some small point of principle?” But there’s no such thing as a small point of principle, principles are big things. If principles aren’t worth fighting for, what else is? What else matters?

A World Without “Whom”: The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age by Emmy J. Favilla

Warning: Here’s where I might start to get a little emotional. Because what’s more beautiful than a strategically placed em dash? Answer: interspecies friendships, random acts of kindness, Oscar Isaac, an empty subway car during rush hour that isn’t the result of a putrid mystery substance permeating the air. But the em dash is not too far behind!

Face it: You hate whom. If you don’t, you’re likely a liar or someone with an English degree who actually still really hates whom but can’t bear to come to terms with your traitorous hatred for fear of your overpriced degree being snatched from your cold, dead hands, never to be seen again. In casual conversation we end sentences with prepositions and we never use whom. It’s a fact. And if you do use whom in conversational speech, you will never see yourself on an invite to a dinner party at my place. Mostly because I’m not the type of person who has dinner parties or uses whom.

The Botanist by M.W. Craven

‘I didn’t want you thinking I’d panicked. I didn’t want you thinking less of me.’

Poe was lost for words. ‘Why would I think less of you?’ he said eventually. ‘You’d just found your father’s corpse. There was a bullet hole in his head. If you can’t panic then, when can you?’

The Law by Jim Butcher

I’d been feeling sorry for myself, which is about the most useless thing you can feel: it doesn’t do a damned thing for you. You don’t feel any better, you don’t get any better, and you’re too busy moping to do anything to actually make your life any better.

The Self-Made Widow by Fabian Nicieza

He wore a faded Creed T-shirt from their 1999 Human Clay tour, which Michelle assumed he would never have worn had he known he’d be dying in it.

Brianne was smart, but she was intellectually lazy, mostly as a result of all the years spent being intellectually lazy.

She started to walk away when he said, “Andrea, since we’re still getting to know each other, for the record, I’ve watched IEDs blow up my friends and I’ve been shot five times, with my vest stopping only three of those.”

He let that sink in for a second.

“You have to come at me with something much better than veiled threats to my job.”

“Filed for future reference, Chief,” she said. “Threats to your wife and kids it is, then. . . .”

Derek and Molly didn’t have a fantasy marriage with wind chimes resonating as they pranced about a grassy field like a pharmaceutical commercial distracting you while the rapid-fire voiceover warned you about side effects like rectal bleeding.

Andrea and Jeff had gone to the preserve only once. He didn’t like nature unless it came with a nineteenth hole, and she didn’t like it without concrete sidewalks and blaring taxi horns.

[redacted]’s eyes looked panicked while the other looked homicidal. It gave him a Bill the Cat quality from the old Bloom County strip.

How the Penguins Saved Veronica by Hazel Prior

So this is what dying is like. Who’d have thought it’d be so frustrating and boring? I’d like it to be over, but no doubt it will drag itself out as long as possible, just like life. How extremely tedious.

With Grimm Resolve by Jeffrey H. Haskell

“Good job, sir,” she said. She knew how fragile officers’ egos were, and it was helpful to reassure them they could find their butt with both hands and a map.

“I don’t really know how to explain it sir.”

“Take your time,” Jacob said with a grin. “It’s only a hitherto unknown stellar phenomenon. You can have a few seconds to figure out how to describe it.”

Jacob took his seat, glancing at the readiness board on his MFD. The ship was at a hundred percent and they were either going to enter the starlane in less than half an hour, or they would die.

Personally, he hoped for the former.

Whispers in the Dark by Chris McDonald

I’d even been interviewed about the case by a petty criminal, from the back seat of the police car on our way back to the station. He told me his mates won’t believe him that he was arrested by THE Erika Piper, and asked could he have a picture to prove it. I’d impolitely declined.

He has me where he wants me. He knows that I am hanging on his every word and he is revelling in it. Though, I swear if he says ‘you see’ again, I will not be responsible for my actions. Liam can sense my mood and intervenes.

As the lift doors close, I can’t help but think I’d been quick to condemn the reception area. Compared to the interior of the lift, it could be confused for a fancy Mayfair hotel. The buttons on the console are coated in a sticky film and Liam does the chivalrous thing, stretching his coat over his hand and prodding the button with supersonic speed.

Ghost of a Chance by Dan Willis

“Is that serious?”

“Very,” Kellin said.

“Untreated it can cause brain injury and even death.”

“What do I do for that?”

“Death?” Dr. Kellin smirked. “Nothing.”

“You just reminded me that there’s a corollary to that formula.”

Alex sat up, interested.

“If you eliminate the impossible and nothing remains,” he said, taking his cigar out of his mouth and considering it.

“Yes?” Alex prompted.

“Then some part of the impossible, must be possible.”

The Deepest Grave by Harry Bingham

How does anyone think that ‘attempted murder’ counts the same as actual murder? They shouldn’t even call it ‘attempted’: that’s just a way to flatter failure. The crime is as close as you can get to the opposite of murder.

The thing is, if you kill someone in these extravagant ways, you’re usually trying to send a message. So when the Ku Klux Klan strung people up from trees, they were carefully sending a message. To black people: stay in your place. To white people: this is the way we run things here. None of that civil rights nonsense, or else… A loathsome message, brutally delivered. But clear. Horribly clear.

Owen is probably a good human being and one more likely to be summoned before the Holy Throne than I am, but, Lord help me, the man is boring. Just talking to him makes me want to push plastic forks into my eyes.

The man swears, disappears, then the snout of a shotgun emerges, and Bowen comes back towards me a lot faster than he left. We shelter behind the slab of a tombstone.

‘What now?’

I shake my head.

Nothing.

Shotgun versus shouting: shotgun wins. They teach you that in the police.

Two walls lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves. Katie starts looking at book titles. No reason, except that’s what people like me and Katie do when we walk into a room with books.

We talk to someone at Google about it. He sounds like a real human being–albeit a Californian one whose hair is probably full of sunshine and organic hair product.

Time.

The fourth dimension.

One of my favourite dimensions. One that brings all the good stuff, even if she brings more than her share of the crappy stuff too. But there are times she’s out of her depth. Times when she shunts one second into the void, over the edge of the present and away– then, blow it, the next second to come along looks exactly the same. And the next and the next.

Thousands of seconds, all alike.

He has that Metropolitan Police we- never- screw- up tone about him which is deeply comforting, until you remember that the Met screws up just as much as anyone else and maybe more.

Biting.

That sounds a bit girly, of course. Scratching, biting, pulling hair. Playground stunts that only girls ever pull. Girls with tears and bunches and grubby knees.

But there’s playground biting and real biting.

My fighting instructor, Lev, once told me that the human jaw can exert as much as a hundred kilos of force. I slightly doubt that my own pearly whites can inflict that much pressure, but they’re still handy. The trick– another of Lev’s much- reiterated nuggets– is to bite with the molars not the incisors. You get double or quadruple the amount of force, and the victim’s area of muscle damage is that much greater.

‘Take the biggest bite you can. Bite hard. And don’t stop. The more your man struggles, the more hurt you do.’

Wise advice.

A dog handler once told me that sniffer dogs aren’t recruited for their powers of smell. ‘They can all smell well enough. Asking them to follow a trail is like asking you to pick a red ball from a basket full of green ones. The only issue is whether the dog understands what you’re asking and feels like helping.’

On Eden Street by Peter Grainger

There are lines, and you cross them at your peril. But the closer one gets to them, the more wavy and broken those lines become. And the longer one does this job, the more the realization dawns that every investigation is unique–barely any of them fit the theories you’re taught in the lecture room.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)