19 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
“Quiet,” I whispered. “Don’t move.”
Denton hissed, but froze in place. “Dresden. I should kill you right now.”
“Try it,” I said, and thumbed back the hammer of the gun. “But after the loud noise, remember to keep going down the tunnel and toward the light.”
— Jim Butcher, Fool Moon
19 June 2006 – 2:32 pm +0800
This book has the markings of being a major turning point for Grisham. It shows an impatience with cartoonish thriller-writing (even while indulging in same to a small extent) in favor of grappling with issues and ideas important to Grisham, and attempting to etch characters with more depth than typical thriller inhabitants.
His very first [...]
19 June 2006 – 10:10 am +0800
Sometimes I wonder if they truly believe the things they say.
Other times I wonder if they’re just trying to make our brains explode with their complete and total illogic.
BEIJING, June 9 (Xinhua) — The controversial blockbuster The Da Vinci Code was withdrawn from Chinese cinemas by its state-owned distributor on Friday, three weeks after its [...]
19 June 2006 – 8:12 am +0800
I took a week off, and stayed completely offline.
Without suffering withdrawal or d.t.s or anything, if you can believe it.
Back now. Have responded to comments, deleted 4,000+ spams from Gmail (plus 200+ that didn’t get filtered!), and so forth.
In case anyone even noticed how quiet things were.
16 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
That was his name. His cue.
The dead man mounted the steps. The lights poured liquid heat over him, the stage, the announcer, the band. He couldn’t see the audience, who were clapping politely, and that was good. In a few seconds he wouldn’t see anything, and that would be better.
The [...]
15 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
“You do an awfully good impression of yourself.”
This is the first line of Lunar Park and in its brevity and simplicity it was supposed to be a return to form, an echo, of the opening line from my debut novel, Less Than Zero.
“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.”
Since then the opening [...]
14 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
Amanda stared at the screen of the DeepEye. A moment ago, the monitor’s resolution had fogged from a deep sonar pulse, wiping out detail. Then worse — the screen went suddenly blue.
Only one effect registered that hue on a sonar device.
A nuclear explosion.
— James Rollins (yes, again!), Ice Hunt
13 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
Gold sleeping under her eyelids, sleeping pills worn off, effortlessly obsolete as breath, their expiration reeling her fast from the silty floor of sleep to the surface, awake.
— Kate Moses, Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath
12 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
“Goddamn it, Charlie, what are you talking about?”
Charlie sighed, letting Jack off the hook. “We ran into a little anomaly, Jack. Like I said before, I’m no expert on this new science of ‘dark energy.’”
“Yeah, so? What happened?”
“Well, when we bombarded the pillar, the dark energy behaved as I had hoped — [...]
9 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
He never went out without a book under his arm, and often came back with two.
— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
9 June 2006 – 12:15 pm +0800
The officially atheist government of the People’s Republic of China has pulled The Da Vinci Code after three profitable weeks.
Why?
They ain’t sayin’.
And, you know, it’s not like you can’t get the DVD for a buck or less just about anywhere on the street.
8 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
— Red Smith
7 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
Fritz was standing there, four feet back from the door to the office, which was standing open, staring wide-eyed at me. When he saw I was looking at him he beckoned me to come, and the thought popped into my mind that, with guests present and Wolfe making an oration, that was precisely how Fritz [...]
6 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
“God damn you,” said Cameron softly.
“God damn you” roared Cameron suddenly, leaning forward. “I didn’t ask you to come here! I don’t need any draftsmen! There’s nothing here to draft! I don’t have enough work to keep myself and my men out of the Bowery Mission! I don’t want any [...]
5 June 2006 – 11:59 pm +0800
I have these guilts about never having read Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon / Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. “Which is all very well,” she said bitterly, “but [...]