Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

First Sentences

“On the morning of April 20,2001, George Tenet gazed out the glass wall of his seventh-floor suite at the Central Intelligence Agency, looking upon a vision of serenity, tall green trees reaching as far as the eye could see.” Tim Weiner, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century.

“Behold. Forty-four-year-old him. A low-budget, Black Jack London shivering in the frozen north called Minnesota.” Jason Mott, People Like Us.

“The Bronx is a hand reaching down to pull the other boroughs of New York City out of the harbor and the sea.” Ian Frazier, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough.

“A prim girl stood still as a fencepost on Rhys Kinnick’s front porch.” Jess Walter, So Far Gone.

“History shows us how to behave.” David McCullough, History Matters (ed. Dorie McCullough Lawson & Michael Hill.)

“The seventeenth century was a tough time to be alive.” Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689.

“The body floats downstream.” Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River.

“In 1991, a generational tale of parking’s role in American life began in Solana Beach, California.” Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.

“At least it gives me an excuse for sweating, thought Peter Pascoe, as he scuttled toward the shelter of the first of the two cars parked across the road from number 3.” Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man.

“Robert Langdon awoke peacefully, enjoyed the gentle strains of classical music from his phone’s alarm on the bedside table.” Dan Brown, The Secret of Secrets.

“After a hasty exit, I patted myself down, checking my pockets to see whether I had stashed anything useful.” Hannah Carlson, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.

“In 1959 Florence Green occasionally passed a night when she was not absolutely sure whether she had slept or not.” Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop.

“On the southern slopes of Mount Zion, alongside the ruins of biblical Jerusalem, lies a small Protestant cemetery.” Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (translated by Haim Watzman).

“In conversation play, the important thing is to get in early and stay there.” Stephen Potter, Lifemanship: Some Notes on Lifemanship with a Summary of Recent Research in Gamesmanship.

“Every Wednesday afternoon in the laboratory where I used to work, we had an event called journal club.” Chris v. Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Cake bakers bake cakes. Bread bakers bake bread. Cookie bakers bake cookies. Bagel bakers bake bagels (after boiling them first, I hope.) Pretzel bakers bake pretzels, with a twist, of course. A recent email from a right wing “religious” organization, referred to “Christian bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein.” Oh, dear! Do Christian bakers bake….?­­

Born-again Christians. Isn’t it better to get it right the first time?

Ascribed to Billy Sunday in Jess Walter, The Cold Millions: “Goin’ to church don’t make you a Christian any more than goin’ to a garage makes you an automobile.”

Do the Christians who are non-celiac but gluten-free pray sincerely, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

Increasingly actors listing credits in Playbills include preferred pronouns. For example, the actor playing Max in the production I just saw included (he/him/his) and the one playing Sandra had (she/her). And pronouns often appear on the signature lines of emails these days. I wrote about how a new pronoun for the NBP has not come easily to me. Search Results for “pronoun” – AJ’s Dad (ajsdad.blog). But my preferred personal pronouns have remained constant: I, me, and especially mine.

I have not done much traveling since Covid infiltrated, but it is funny what I retain from earlier trips. For example, I went to Morocco shortly before the pandemic. I could not name all the different foods I tried. I cannot remember all the restaurants and hotels. I could not even tell you all the cities I visited. But I do remember that Morocco had many wonderful, varied streetlights.

Like others, I have admired the broad boulevards of Paris that help make the city beautiful. However, A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh says that these streets were not designed for their esthetics but to aid the police so that the thoroughfares could not be blockaded as they had been earlier in the Nineteenth Century.

Call me prejudiced. I was surprised at how fit–and attractive–the mixed-doubles Olympic curlers were.

“It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude.” Norman Douglas.

Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.

Are you a Zen master if, when you order a hot dog, you say, “Make me one with everything”?

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Whenever I think of my mother, I picture a queen-sized bed with her lying on it, a practiced stillness filling the room.” Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom.

“I underwent, during that summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.

“Darkness came on that town like a candle being snuffed.” Jess Walter, The Cold Millions.

“I’m eight years old.” Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments.

“The first time they drove by the house Eddie was so scared he ducked his head down.” Delores Hitchens, Fools’ Gold.

“There is a hidden world of design all around you if you look closely enough, but the cacophony of visual noise in our cities can make it hard to notice the key details.” Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt, The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design.

“Su Alteza Isabel II, Reina de España, carried ten relics on her person during her last few weeks of pregnancy.” Chantel Acevedo, The Living Infinite.

“The classical world was far closer to the makers of the American Revolution and the founders of the United States than it is to us today.” Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped our Country (2020).

“This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier.

“I am writing a book about war . . .” Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II.

“My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder.” Sarah Waters, Fingersmith.

“The cocktails were typically strong, and tonight they felt like fortification.” Jeff Shesol, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court.

“Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy.” Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown.

“Had she grown up in any other part of America, Jennifer Doudna might have felt like a regular kid.” Walter Isaacson, Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.” Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence.