Last week of classes and I am supposed to be writing a Geochemistry final - so I am quickly typing up this instead (I am working on it, I am really ... this is a short mental break, honest!) ...
Lexicon by Max Barry came out in paperback (squee!) so I grabbed a copy to be one of my possible Bout of Books 10.0 reads. Therefore - since I haven't read it yet and don't dare start reading it for real now (writing finals - gotta focus) - I have limited myself to just scanning through the book for this post and holding off actually reading it until BoB starts.
Page 1 ...
"He's coming around."
"Their eyes always do that."
The world was blurry. There was a pressure in his right eye. He said, Urk.
I can't go past that without things getting rather out of hand.
Now I need a non-fiction book that is not too much of a bummer - I am surrounded by environmental tomes which mostly don't make for lively quotes. I guess I will go with a classic Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner (copyright 1986). This book was the basis of an awesome PBS documentary which is almost impossible to get a decent copy of these days.
One late November night in 1980 I was flying over the state of Utah on my way back to California. I had an aisle seat, and since I believe that anyone who flies in an airplane and doesn't spend most of his time looking out the window wastes his money, I walked back to the rear door of the airplane and stood for a long time at the door's tiny aperture, squinting out at Utah.
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| Utah has some amazing geology - that is the Green River courtesy of Wikipedia |
For The Friday 56 hosted at Freda's Voice from page 56 of Lexicon we have ...
Emily had meant that as an insult but now realized the angel girl was serious. The had seriously tried to compliment her jacket. "Yeah. They're like a fairy's." She elbowed the ten-year-old. "Fairy ears, right ?"
"Yes."
"Oh," said the angel girl. "Well, thank you."
There were silver plates with bite-size constructions of meat and bread and paste and whatever. She picked one up only because it got her out of this conversation. It was actually not bad. Weird, but not bad-weird. This was her whole day, on a cracker.
And from page 56 of Cadillac Desert:
The city was still small when Otis arrived, but it was already served by several newspapers, one of which, the Times and Mirror, was owned by a small-time eastern financier named H. H. Boyce. Boyce was looking for a new editor, and, though the pay was a miserable $15 a week, Otis took the job. Perhaps becuase he was fuming about the pay, or perhaps because he knew that time was running out, Captain Otis then made one of the bolder decisions of his life. He took all of his savings and, to help offset the low pay, convinced Boyce to let him purchase a share in the newspaper. Privately he was thinking that someday, perhaps, he could force H.H. Boyce out.
Both books sound good, but Cadillac Desert really appeals to me. I'd like to know more about this topic.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link to my Friday post: MOVING IN.
I like the one about looking out at Utah.
ReplyDeleteI like them both but Lexicon really jumped at me.
ReplyDeleteHappy weekend!