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55th Page
Title:ArmageddonAuthor: Tim Lahaye
Paragraph:
"Maybe you're feeling guilty about being angry with her because you're scared to death she's into something over her head. I don't blame you. I don't. I'm telling you, we need everybody on this, especially someone with your brain. Now, you want to find her so we can get her back safe and sound, or you want to assume the worst and start grieving now?"
That's a hell of a pep talk, CJ! You found a good one! :)
Hehe. I chose this one because it involves a fairly shocking event. And as of this moment I do not know whether the character being talked about lives or dies because I haven't finished the book yet. So I'm in suspense currently!
Garrison wrote: "OOC: I gave the Neil Gaiman comic book a fair chance and still couldn’t make sense of what was going on in the damn thing. Call me new-school. Time for a new book.Yes, can't win them all. But the Queen's last line sounds so... Odd. So out of context it has got my curiosity. I may see if I can track down a copy.
I thought the Queen's last line was weird too, Guy. Those words certainly don't belong together.
Book: In This House of BredeAuthor: Rumer Godden
"There had been nothing misleading in Penny; she was stubby, gray-eyed with dark hair that always looked tousled, but Penny was firm-- 'all of a piece, all through,' as Joyce Bowman used to say-- and her eyes were as openly trustful as a dog's, while Cecily veiled hers from any direct gaze. Two girls, but utterly different and not only in looks and character; fulfillment, for Penny, lay in loving Donald, however he might treat her, Donald and, one day, Donald's children; while for Sister Cecily. . .Up on the tower Philippa said a prayer, not for the dying abbess but for the new postulant."
I recently reread this book, and enjoyed it, and Rumer Godden's exquisite writing, as much if not more than the first time. I will post a review later, but I do recommend this book highly. It is NOT just for Catholics, and perhaps oddly enough, it is one I suggest for men, who would like to learn a bit about the inner workings of women who have separated themselves from men, and thoughts about them!
[LOL! Hello Paula. Great back-handed recommendation. :-) ]
Guy wrote: "[LOL! Hello Paula. Great back-handed recommendation. :-) ]"I should have said I am not a catholic, either, and I love men, but I do think many Martians could use some insight into how many Venusians think. Not you of course. . .
Rotfl! What a great come back, Paula! Nice to see you back. :-)
TITLE: Altered CarbonAUTHOR: Richard K. Morgan
YEAR: 2002
GENRE: Fiction
SUBGENRE: Science Fiction
For some reason I thought of the telescope abandoned on Bancroft’s sundeck. I saw it stranded in angular silhouette against the evening sky, a mute testimony to the times and obsessions past and a relic no one wanted. I remembered the way it had wheezed back into alignment after I jarred it, faithful to programming maybe centuries old, briefly awakened the way Miriam Bancroft had stroked the songspire awake in the all.
BOOK TITLE: Star IslandAUTHOR: Carl Hiaasen
YEAR: 2010
GENRE: Fiction
SUBGENRE: Environmental Thriller
Suddenly the gulf stream felt rather small to Bang Abbott. The thought of having to converse with this woman for three more hours was dispiriting. Bang Abbott had zero interest in the childhood memories, political views, or life-guiding philosophies of the celebrities he pursued; the pictures were all that mattered. He wondered how long it would be until Cherry passed out, so he could try again with his camera.
TITLE: How to Read Literature Like a Professor AUTHOR: Thomas C. Foster
CHAPTER: Hanseldee and Greteldum
GENRE: Nonfiction
Well, what elements do you want to emphasize in your story? What feature of the plight of these young people most resonates with you? It might be the sense of lostness. Children too far from home, in a crisis not of their own making. Maybe the temptation: one child's gingerbread is another's drugs. Maybe it's having to fend for themselves, without their customary support network.
That is indeed professor-like, Angie. I could learn a lot from that book! :)
I expected it to be horrible when I found out it was assigned for the summer, but he has my sense of humor, so this book has been surprisingly enjoyable to read.
Laughter is the best medicine for a reason. I'm glad you like what you're reading. :)
I'm glad too :) School readings aren't usually enjoyable, so it's a pleasant surprise when they are.
I know what you mean. I couldn't finish reading "Black Hole" by Charles Burns for my graphic novels class in college, so I ordered my own copy over the summer and caught up. It was a delightfully disturbing read. :)
Here's another book I read for my summer literature assignment. TITLE: Lord of the Flies
AUTHOR: William Golding
CHAPTER: Huts on the Beach
GENRE: Fiction
"If you're hunting, sometimes you catch yourself feeling as if-" He flushed suddenly. "There's nothing in it of course. just a feeling. But you can feel ad if you're not hunting, but--being hunted, as if something's behind you all the time in the jungle."
Is Lord of the Flies the same book where a bunch of kids say to an asthmetic kid, "Sucks to your ass-mar!"?
Well it's more like the same kid saying that over and over again, but yeah.
I remember reading that book in high school, but my memory of it is fuzzy, so I had to ask about that "ass-mar" line.
Angie wrote: "TITLE: How to Read Literature Like a Professor AUTHOR: Thomas C. Foster
CHAPTER: Hanseldee and Greteldum
GENRE: Nonfiction
Well, what elements do you want to emphasize in your story? What featur..."
That does sound like an interesting book Angie!
Oh yeah, and your other one ...is Lord of the Flies good? I never had to read it for school and the only person I knew that did told me he hated it.
CJ, if I was reading it for fun, I think I would have hated it, because it's a bit hard to follow. But since I have to analyze it for my literature class, I was okay with it; the symbols were there and there were lots of layers.
Oh, that sounds good. Glad to hear you liked it.
Funny little fushigi or near one. Today I was asked to visit friends. The ask was specifically because the one, my first yoga instructor, was back after 9 months of travelling. So great to see her! And it was an opportunity to catch up with her, her sister and parents because the parents were having a moving sale to downsize before moving into a smaller place. Well, the fushigi? On a table with a tiny pile of books, I saw on top The Lord of the Flies, a book that I have given only one star after having read it three times in grade school. I read this thread an hour or two before visiting them. Odd. And even funnier, on top of the stack beside it one of my all time favourite books, Fall on Your Knees.Title: Fall On Your Knees
Author: Ann-Marie MacDonald
Chapter: The Price of a Song
Genre: Fiction
I have to go to confession, she thought, but then ... in order to be forgiven I must be heartily sorry, but to be sorry for eloping means to be sorry for everything that came from it. And she couldn't be. She still wanted her husband and that too was a sin: to want the man, and not want the child that comes from the marital act. And so she would keep coming back to original sin.
Hi there, Guy! Can you educate me on what a "fushigi" is? The last time I heard that word used, it was the name of an anti-gravity ball that was promoted as being "therapeutic and fun". There was even an episode of the Napoleon Dynamite cartoon where one of the characters used a fushigi ball as part of a magician's act. So, what is it, Guy? I'm curious. :)
Hello Garrison. it is Japanese for wondrous or magical event. I use it following its usage by American 'Constructive Living' psychologist David K. Reynolds. It is a big part of my blog, and you will find the complete definition and examples at http://egajd.blogspot.ca/p/fushigi-wt....Now it is time to go to bed.
I feel educated now. Thanks, Guy! :)
LOL! Ah, if only to be educated were so easily done! The more one knows, the more one becomes aware of the infinite vastness of one's ignorance. I used to write fushigis in a black book — I amassed three of them before I started blogging them. Now they accumulate on sticky notes that are scattered around my desk like confetti.
Reading this book for school too, and I gotta say that I'm really loving it so far!TITLE: The Handmaid's Tale
AUTHOR: Margaret Atwood
GENRE: Science Fiction/ Dystopian
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were men we knew. The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives.
That's some deep stuff from Ms. Atwood. I was scheduled to read it in college for my Canadian Literature class, but I fell behind, so it never happened. Now I have my own copy of The Handmaid's Tale after visiting a book sale in a Tacoma library. I get a second chance and judging from that 55th page entry from you, Angie, it's going to be worthwhile. :)
I agreed to read and give an honest review of this book for my good friend Andy. Though I haven’t started it yet, I know it’s going to be awesome.TITLE: Blade of the Destroyer: The Last Bucelarii: Book 1
AUTHOR: Andy Peloquin
YEAR: 2015
GENRE: Fiction
SUBGENRE: Fantasy
Lord Dannaros removed a small seal and a pot of wax from the desk drawer. He had just removed the stopper when a harsh, grating voice rang out in the silence of the office: “Lord Dannaros, your day of reckoning has come.”
Speaking of fantasy... :)Title: The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring
Author: J. R. R. Tolkien
"Elven-lore:
Three Rings for the Elven Kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."
Garrison, I definitely recommend reading it. Ms. Atwood's writing is absolutely stunning.
Handmaid's Tale is excellent. And Oryx and Crake is even better. When I find a few minutes I'll 5th page it.
“Nevertheless, 120 is a good ballpark figure for estimating the mean person in these high-IQ professions, and it also has the advantage of marking the cutoff point for approximately the top tenth of the entire population in IQ. Armed with this information plus a few conjectures, we may explore how cognitive stratification at the top of the American labor market has changed over the years. . . .”Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
“After our insistence, as in the early part of this chapter, upon the importance of social factors in mental deficiency, our last conclusion may strike the reader as a disturbing, if not damaging admission. It is. Practically, mental deficiency is a social and economic as well as a psychological diagnosis. But in a basic sense the causes of mental deficiency are neither social nor economic. They are primarily biological, physiological and to some extent genetic, although demonstrably influenced by a variety of other factors. . . .”Wechsler, David. The Measurement and Appraisal of Adult Intelligence. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1958.
[Hello M. Interesting that you would post these items on IQ. At a reunion with an estranged sister Thursday, she mentioned my father's IQ. It was measured at 168. That is the first time I'd heard that about him.]
Title: Mr. Monk Is MiserableAuthor: Lee Goldberg
Sections of page 55:
'"I'd forgotten until now what this place must mean to you," Monk said, daring a glance over his shoulder at me. "I suppose that it's changed since you were here with him."
"It's a stupid thing to cry about. Everything changes."
"My life has changed a lot since Trudy was killed, and so has the world around me, but my feelings about her will always be the same."
No wonder he hated change so much.
...
"So what do you do about it?" I asked.
"I see things the same way I always have."
"But they aren't the same," I said.
"It's not what you see that's important. It's how you perceive it. Julie changes every day but she will always be your little girl."
I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. "I could hug you."
"Take a wipe instead," Monk said, offering me one. "It will do you more good."'
Title: Mr. Palomar (chapter 'From the Terrace')Author: Italo Calvino
Year: 1985 (English) 1983 (Italian)
Translator: William Weaver
Publisher: Lester and Orpen Dennys Ltd Toronto Canada
"Nothing of this [rooftop panorama] can be seen by one who moves on his feet or his wheels over the city pavements. And, inversely, from up here [from a bird's perspective] you have the impression that the true crust of the earth is this, uneven but compact, even if furrowed by gaps whose depths cannot be known, chasms or pits or craters whose edges seem in perspective to overlap like scales of a pine cone, and it never even occurs to you to wonder what is hidden in their depth, because the panorama of the surface is already so vast and rich and various that it more then suffices to saturate the mind with information and meanings."
(Wow, Guy! An IQ of 168 is even higher than Stephen Hawking’s. I read somewhere that he has an IQ of 160.)
TITLE: CinderAUTHOR: Marissa Meyer
Kai's father moaned and opened swollen eyes. The room was quarantined on the seventh floor of the palace ' research wing, but yhe emperor had been made as comfortable as possible. Numerous screens lined the walls so he might enjoy music and entertainment, so he might be read to. His favorite flowers had been brought in droves from the gardens--lilies and chrysanthemums filling the otherwise sterile room. the bed was dressed in the finest silks the Commonwealth had to offer.
But none of it made much of a difference. It was still a room made to keep the living separate from the dying.
Title: Moms Who Drink and Swear: True Tales of Loving My Kids While Losing My MindAuthor: Nicole Knepper
Paragraph:
At this point, I’m usually feeling my blood pressure rise; like each kid and dog has shrunk to microscopic size and they are playing a game of tag or hide-and-seek inside my arteries. I imagine that I can actually feel their little feet kicking me and pointy claws scratching me and the only relief from this feeling of being physically possessed would be to bleed them out… which reminds me to be more careful with the knife I’m probably using to chop up some shit because if I did end up accidently cutting one of them (’cause sometimes they literally stick their fingers next to whatever I’m chopping and I do NOT know why) I’d never hear the end of it and neither would their therapists.
Or what if I accidentally cut myself; then who the fuck would cook dinner?
I can see why you like that book, Marie. Hehehehe!
BOOK TITLE: YES!: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event of WrestlemaniaAUTHOR: Daniel Bryan (with Craig Tello)
YEAR: 2015
GENRE: Nonfiction
SUBGENRE: Pro-Wrestling Memoir
It was me and Shooter Schultz, another of Shawn’s students, against Lance Cade and Brian Kendrick. Originally we were told by a WWE producer that we’d have twelve minutes to wrestle, so naturally, we planned out a twelve-minute match. Then, shortly before the show was about to start, we were told that we only had six minutes. None of us knew what to do because that had never happened to us before, whereas now I realize that’s a common occurrence in WWE. We told Shawn, and that’s where it was good to have Shawn Michaels as an advocate. He was expecting WWE agents to take a thorough look at us, and so he went off, yelling about “his guys” and demanding more time for us. We got ten minutes.
Edward, I hope you don’t mind, but I think I’m going to do a 55th page post of “Divine Intervention”. I love this game too much to stay out of it. Hehe!BOOK TITLE: Divine Intervention
AUTHOR: Edward Davies
YEAR: 2011
GENRE: Fiction
SUBGENRE: Comedy
Pixie, who had been silent throughout most of the latter discussion, stroked her chin, “You know something?” she began, “Jimmy’s right = what does it matter if we don’t get back into heaven? We’d just become mortal again! Then, when we die, we’d probably end up back in heaven again! All it means is that we’d have a bit of a wait.”
Title: Jabbering with Bing BongAuthor: Kevin Spenst
Year: 2015
Genre: Poetry
Sub-Genre: Comedy
Procedure, we reassure him, standard procedure.
There's a hole in my heart! he cries. We feel
for his off-kilter grief, but upstairs the smell of
a three-day-old body poltergeists the home,
I'd hate to be the undertaker who has to bury that body. Hehe!
Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company!
Books mentioned in this topic
Debt: The First 5,000 Years (other topics)How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (other topics)
Adult Onset (other topics)
When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (other topics)
Morning Star (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Ann-Marie MacDonald (other topics)Gabor Maté (other topics)
Marie Kondō (other topics)
Barbara Stoler Miller (other topics)
Marcus Aurelius (other topics)
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TITLE: Wish You Were Here
AUTHOR: Rita Mae Brown (and Sneaky-Pie Brown)
YEAR: 1990
GENRE: Fiction
SUBGENRE: Cat Mystery
The dew held what scent there was on the ground. Much had evaporated. Gasoline fumes and rock dust pervaded. Human smells were everywhere, as was the scent of wet concrete and stale blood. Tucker, nose to the ground, kept at it. Mrs. Murphy checked out the office building. She couldn’t get in. No windows were open; there were no holes in the foundation. She grumbled.