From the Bookshelf of 2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge…

... and I feel the tensile strength of my nerves hit the ceiling as we roll down Damen Avenue, a parking lot of cabs in the crest of the evening’s wavelength.

It occurs to me that my first inclination when I woke up in this place was the right one. Be the man they think I am. The only way to pull that off is to pretend my memories and my identity have abandoned me. Let them fill in the blanks. Because if I’m not the man they think I am, then they have no use for me.

Then I never leave this lab alive.

...I wouldn’t say he was happy. He lived an intellectually stimulating but ultimately one-dimensional life. All he did was work. In the last five years, he didn’t have a life outside the lab. He practically lived there.”

... she lifts her wineglass and clinks it against my pint. Says, “To a good meal, a warm bed, and not being dead yet.”