i finished rides of the midway by lee durkee last week. it moves up into the top ten books i've ever read. seriously amazing. never boring. and because of the editor of a confederacy of dunces...had a first sentence that floored me and caused me to read it.
first two sentences
"Half ghost, half skeleton, and tethered to his body like a dog in a yard, Ross waned only to fly out the one window. But as it was, being neither quite dead nor quite alive, he cold not soar through the hospital window except in the dream fits that overtook him without warning so that no event could be altogether trusted."
other faves:
"kamper park reeked of lost enthusiasm."
"noel let his eyes burn out of focus on the twinkling light under which amber's father may or may not have been loading a shotgun, then he returned his attention to amber, to her nakedness that any moment now would close itself from her forever. he tried to clear his mind, to leave it a blank sheet so that her naked body could develop onto it like an image inside a chemical bath."
"that our lives are little more than our memories of our lives, that we have secret playgrounds we visit from time to time that we keep hidden from the parts of us that claim to remember..."
"noel did not watch them go but instead imagined them looking back down at him from the top of the amphitheater, at teh figure of solitude he cut there."
"he held the question in his mouth, tasting it. the taste was venom and bile, the taste of grief."
"baptists know their songs by heart, especially the hymns they use to serenade the dead."
december details. - 12.16.09
the stages of acceptance. - 07.24.09
the thumb as a useful tool - 07.21.09
a home for my heart. - 03.24.09
a concise chinese-englisth dictionary for lovers - 01.26.09
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