elstaffe > Recent Status Updates

"The idea endures that country music is based on wholesome values, but studies are finding otherwise. Country and rap lyrics, once you peel away the cultural differences, have generally similar violent through-lines. (What's more, country music actually makes more references to drugs than any other major musical genre, while rap makes the fewest.)" (23) I wish these studies were in the endnotes for my own nerdiness

"That was when I learned from Lizzie that you don't comment on how many guns a person has. You don't ask how many guns they've bought. You don't ask how many guns they've sold. 'It's like asking how much money you make, or how many times a week you have sex with your wife,' Lizzie said. 'You just don't do it.'" (17)

"I brought up the idea that country music is just as bad as rap music in its characterization of violence. That it was just as bad as hip-hop in its depiction of women as objects, and to act as if that statement wasn't true was the sort of exercise in arrogance that black people weren't allowed." (22)

"With rough, careless movements, the woman picked up a wooden spoon and a couple of mugs and inspected them, then walked out of the shop." (236) hundred percent read this as the woman just walking off without paying and it took me till halfway through the next page to realize she was supposed to have put the stuff back down. C'mon translator.

"'I've never been. Is it really that good?'

'I'm fairly sure they use only proper butter, not margarine. My gosh, you can taste the difference!'" (117) shoutout to Butter

"The curved glass front of the hotel focused sunlight and burned the skin of hotel guests lounging by the pool.
Can we reasonably expect the architect of 20 Fenchurch Street to have known about a hotel out in Las Vegas? Well, the Vdara Hotel was also designed by Rafael Viñoly, so we could probably expect some information flow between the two projects." (280)

"There was an easy enough fix, though: a sunshade was attached to the building to block the sun's rays before they could focus on anyone else's lemon. And it's not as if this freak alignment of reflective surfaces could have been predicted in advance. It had never happened to a building before. At least, not since the same thing happened at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas in 2010." (280)

"The exterior of the building was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly to have a sweeping curve, but this meant that all the reflective glass windows accidentally became a massive concave mirror—a kind of giant lens in the sky able to focus sunlight on a tiny area." (281) whoops

"The building at 20 Fenchurch Street in London was nearing completion in 2013 when a major design flaw became apparent. It had nothing to do with the structural integrity of the building; it was completed in 2014 and is a perfectly functioning building to this day, ... By all measures, it's a successful building. Except, during the summer of 2013, it started setting things on fire." (281)

"Several stories in Humble Pi involve a computer system that counts backward, then crashes when it hits zero and 'rolls over.' There also are several math mistakes from the stories in the book that have been deliberately incorporated into the book itself. This is why the page numbers are in reverse order. Please don't take it back for a refund." (315)

"Dedicated to my relentlessly supportive wife, Lucie.
Yes, I appreciate that dedicating a book about mistakes to your wife is itself a bit of a mistake." (317)

"bioluminescence-The light produced and given off by living organisms, such as fireflies and jellyfish." (74) why is this in the glossary for this book? This is the only time it has come up (well, and in the index, which points to this page). I guess careless editor leaving in the glossary template from a previous book?

"Figuring that was enough bears, the department decided to bring the numbers down by encouraging more people to hunt bears for more days of the year. The plan of New Hampshire's bureaucrats was to stabilize the number at 5,100.
But the plan of New Hampshire's bears was slightly different: to make a
thousand more bears.
The bears prevailed. Between 2006 and 2013, their ranks increased by
another 1,140 animals." (142)

"The blood came up under Elliot's eyes." (155) the number of times that description had been used in this book makes me wonder if it's just describing flushed cheeks or if I'm missing something

"'You see, I'd been wondering: I-you know-I slept with Bentley last night, without—you know-using precautions.'
Even in that gloom, her face was pink. She gulped out the words.
'So that,' grated Andy, 'that was why he was so full of beans this morning.'
'Andy!' said Tess, shocked." (114) published 1940

"Soon after moving to town in 2008, Ploszaj (it's pronounced rarely) decided to hike a trail from Hardy Hill Road to the Pinnacle, a high peak that overlooks the valley in which Grafton is situated. Ploszaj (really, it's pronounced 'PLO-zhay')" (53) big talk from a man with the last name Hongoltz-Hetling

"Like many Free Towners, Babiarz implied that it was grossly unfair for people to judge the Free Town Project by the views expressed on the Free Town Project website." (38)

"But in fact, I was to learn, the town's longtime Graftonites, libertarian liberators, and bears of unusual enterprise were connected by far more than the dirt roads wending through its wild hills and valleys." (2) if that's not a Princess Bride reference...inconceivable

"I shake my head. No point making myself feel worse with imaginary scenarios—even though that seems to be what I do best." (89-90)

[poster: Vote Cobbs Or Your Corny]

"'He didn't even spell "you're" correctly.'

'What makes a football jock like Harry Cobbs think he's qualified to be president?'
'Doesn't matter. He's a shoe-in since" (53) wait and you dare make fun of a your/you're mixup, author?

"... in their 1986 book Die Krankheiten Ludwig van Beethovens (The Illnesses of Ludwig van Beethoven)." KRANKHEITEN

"Dr. Guevara would choose simply to curl the hairs that now were his inside a sterile petri dish, its lid held tight with a silver ribbon, which in turn he placed inside what he believed was his fireproof, bombproof, and theftproof office safe." (195) this sentence made me worried there would be a stinger later on in the book with fire, bombs, or theft. But no.

"A hundred and twenty Jews had failed in their desperate effort to reach exile in Sweden, and virtually all the townspeople of Gilleleje now ached with the belief that they horribly had let them down." (100) presumably all except the one who betrayed them to the Gestapo

"Chopin, the man whom Hiller admitted he had fallen a little in love with when they met in wondrous Paris, had been sickly since that time and had died two years after Mendelssohn" (44-45) oh??

"Hot springs abound throughout Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Unlike in the litigious States, there are no protective barriers between visitors and the boiling, sulfur-spewing natural wonder. So, if you don't mind getting accidentally burned, you can use the springs as you wish." (211)

"Street monkeys abounded in both Nepal and northern India. While most travelers' first impulse was to be charmed by monkeys ('Oh, they look like little people!') ... I met several folks who suddenly had their glasses or watches snatched by monkeys who wouldn't return them without a
'liberation tax' of several bananas ('Oh, they act like people, too.')." (172)

"Feeling the familiar twinges of guilt, I recited my comforting mantra to myself: I was as glad to see black library patrons as white, I thought black kids were as cute as white kids, I worked as well with black librarians as white. Except Beverly Rillington." (70-71) bless your heart, Roe

"'And I go to the same Sunday school class as Terry McCloud.' Terry was another attorney in Lawrenceton.
He was my mother's lawyer, so he would be conservatively excellent. 'I speak to Terry every Sunday. I make a point of it.'" (156) damn, Lizanne is not messing around

"'The second I learned about this affair, I started taking the kids to church every single Sunday. I wasn't so consistent before, but I haven't missed a sermon in five months.
Wednesday nights, too. And Bubba hasn't gone with me twice, I bet.'
Lizanne was going to use God as a character witness." (156) you go, Lizanne!

"'I wasn't going to divorce Bubba without as much stink as I could raise. ... I know Bubba thinks I'm dumb, and I am about some things. ... But I know how it'd look in the papers. Mother of twins, orphan of murdered parents, abandoned by her lawyer husband for another woman.
And you know what else?'
A little stunned, Melinda and I shook our heads." (156)