Reading Freely

Today’s TTT is top ten books that involve…….blank. I am also drawing a blank, so I’ll just do the tease unless another TTTer’s post gives me inspiration.

“When you’re sneaking up on somebody, you might consider keeping your voice low,” Wacey hissed as McLanahan apparoached. “It’s an old, sly Indian trick.” – OPEN SEASON, C.J. Box

ON THE THIRD DAY OF THEIR HONEYMOON, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy. – SAVAGE RUN, C.J. Box

Let me put it another way. Suppose you say to someone, “Would you like
to hear an epigrammatic passage of dense prose, broken up ad hoc into lines on a page, with the occasional interior rhyme or alliteration or assonance, seasoned with a figure of speech or two?” That would describe the great majority of free verse poems in English. The answer would be ambivalent at best. If your friend is kind and patient, he will tell you to go ahead, while he rubs the back of his neck and glances toward the door. But suppose you say, “Would you like to hear a song?” Then he smiles and says, “Sure!” That is because people like songs, just as they like beautiful old Victorian houses, or a spray of flowers on a rosebush—and for many of the same reasons, which have to do with form, repetition, variation, subordination, coherence, luminosity, and the capacity to arouse wonder. People are happy to hear a true folk song, even if it is a silly song. I’ve never met anyone whose heart warmed to epigrammatic passages of dense prose broken up ad hoc into lines on a page – THE HUNDREDFOLD, Anthony Esolen

More like “first top ten things characters said that I remembered”. But first, the Tuesday tease.

“Do you have a birth certificate?”
“No.”
“May I ask why not?”
“I was a baby. I wasn’t in charge of the paperwork.” (Camino Ghosts, John Grisham)

Yes, this was going to be his best novel so far, although sadly it was drawn directly from life – his own. It was about a failing poet, Gordon Comstock, in his early thirties, working in a dusty bookshop and living alone in an attic bedsit – halfway to the workhouse already. Good prose, he believed, should be like a windowpane, but in this case it would have to be a mirror. (The Last Man in Europe: A Novel)

And now, some quotes that have taken up long-term residency in my head. (Believe me, it was hard keeping Cornwell restricted to two.)

A Far Better Rest:

“They’ll hang the fellow at Tyburn, and there will be an end to it.”
“If he is found Guilty.”
“Indeed. Your legal acuity never ceases to amaze me.”
“I do not intend that he shall be found Guilty.”
“A commendable position for the Counsel for the Defense. Bravissimo.”

Yoda: Dark Rendezvous:

“It’s always so easy to avoid other people’s vices, isn’t it?”

White Fang:

“An’ right here I want to remark,’ Bill went on, ‘that that animal’s familiarity with camp-fires is suspicious an’ immoral.’
‘It knows for certain more’n a self-respectin’ wolf ought to know,’ Henry agreed

Sharp’s Havoc:

”What I don’t understand,” Sharpe persevered, “is why she ran away.”
“She’s probably in love,” Hogan explained airily. “Nineteen-year-old girls of respectable families are dangerously susceptible to love because of all the novels they read.”

The Lion at Sea

‘You are a wart,’ the sub-lieutenant of the gunroom had told him firmly. ‘An excrescence. An ullage. A growth. You probably imagine that when signalled “House your topmast”, you should reply, “fine, how’s yours?” and doubtless the only time you’ll show any enthusiasm for the navy will be on full-belly nights when we’re entertaining visitors.’

‘arry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone:

“We could have been killed — or worse, expelled!”

The Brave Cowboy

“Where’re your papers?”
“My what?”
“Your I.D. — draft card, social security, driver’s license.”
“Don’t have none. Don’t need none. I already know who I am.”

Jayber Crow

One Saturday evening, while Troy was waiting his turn in the chair, [he said] “They ought to round up every one of them [war protesters] and put them right in front of the communists, and then whoever killed who, it would all be to the good.”
There was a little pause after that. Nobody wanted to try and top it. I thought of Athey’s reply to Hiram Hench.
It was hard to do, but I quit cutting hair and looked at Troy. I said “‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.’”
Troy jerked his head up and widened his eyes at me. “Where did you get that crap?”
I said, “Jesus Christ.”
And Troy said, “Oh”.
It would have been a great moment in the history of Christianity, except that I did not love Troy.

Death of Kings

“Oh, lord, I am so many things! A scholar, a priest, an eater of cheese, and now I am chaplain to Lord Uhtred, the pagan who slaughters priests. That’s what they tell me. I’d be eternally grateful if you refrained from slaughtering me. May I have a servant, please?”

The Silver Chair

This is my password,” said the King as he drew his sword. “The light is dawning, the lie broken. Now guard thee, miscreant, for I am Tirian of Narnia.”