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I am bored here. Who starts writing a series with a 46 years old female detective? How old will she be by book 8? And the author seems obsessed with fat people and food. I only keep reading because I'm curious about a character (Phin) who has had so far 2 short scenes...

“To do is to be.”
Plato
“To be is to do.”
Socrates
“Do be do be do.”
Sinatra

(He's in hospital)
He sat down, looking worse than I felt. Then put a Dunnes’ bag on the bed, said,
“Things I thought you’d need.”
“Any drink?”
I felt like the mad priest in “Father Ted”. I rummaged through the bag.
6 oranges
Lucozade
Box of Milk Tray
Deodorant
Pyjamas
Rosary beads
I held up the beads, asked,
“How bad did you hear I was?”

I would very much like to grow very, very old and decrepit and probably incontinent and senile in your company.

So romantic :)

Neil Gaiman as narrator reads like a pro :0

Book art for a summer day :)

Author: Ellen Weinstein

The mechanic had laid out two suits of their Martian-made light combat armor, a number of rifles and shotguns, and stacks of ammunition and explosives.
“What,” Holden said, “is all this?”
“You said to gear up for the drop.”
“I meant, like, underwear and toothbrushes.”

What a blood bath.

She gave an exasperated laugh. “Jesus, who doesn’t have a mobile phone?”

“I don’t,” Fegan said.

“Me neither,” Ellen said. “Mummy won’t get me one.”

Marie looked down at her daughter. “You’re five, Ellen. Who are you going to phone?”

Ellen gave it some thought. “Santa,” she said.

This is their second meeting. She is trying to hire him to reform her house. (A 5 bedrms 4 baths tilted monstruosity, why does she need that?)

He shook his head and playfully swatted at me. “You, Peyton Clark, are a ballbuster.”
I laughed and even though I knew I was headed into dangerous territory, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “Are yours feeling a little sensitive?”

Life is too short.

Dimples?
This better improve soon and fast.
Dimples??

...Old Hunter’s other nickname, “Suzhou Opera Singer,” a reference to a popular southern dialect opera known for its performers’ tactics of prolonging a story through endless digression.

This author must have a great voice. I think a neat historical note could have saved 200 pages of endless explanations. The book felt too long.
Very interesting to learn about life, work and housing in Shanghai in 1990 though.

Emperor Yan.. had many imperial concubines, and one favorite goat. At night, the emperor let the goat amble before him through a sea of bedrooms. When the goat stopped, the Emperor took it as a sign from Heaven to spend the night in the nearest room. More often than not, he found the goat halted in front of the 311 concubine’s pearl-curtained door. She was wrapped in white clouds, in anticipation of the coming rain.

“Returning your lustrous pearls with tears in my eyes, / Lord, I should’ve met you before I married.”

Father, he wrote in the moonlight, My fear for my son wakes me up, shaking. I used to laugh when I was a son.

In a bucket a cricket sang, he wrote, cutting through my sorrow. I am awestruck. Thank you, father, for teaching me how to listen. He folded the paper, wrote his father’s name on it, scribbled, in English, Seattle, on the upper corner, then lit it with the candle, dropping it into an empty clay pot. He watched the ashes drift into the mist, his postcard from America.

They all watched as a battered purple mini drove up to the taxi offices. When the driver’s door opened, the man mountain squeezed himself out.
‘Like toothpaste from the tube,’ said Rebus.

“Let’s go, then.”
“‘Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred.’”
“Will I have to listen to you recite poetry all the way to Hampstead Heath?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Who was that, Browning?”
“It was Tennyson.”
“Still living?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mmmph.”
Barker believes that all poets should have the decency to be dead at least a century or two. I feel the same way about politicians.

This had the (lack of) sensitivity of a novel written and set in the 70s.