Waiting for Sunrise - William Boyd (1)

I. A Young, Almost Conventionally Handsome Man

It is a clear and dazzling summer's day in Vienna. You are standing in a skewed pentangle of lemony sunshine at the sharp corner of Augustiner Strasse and Augustinerbastei, across from the opera house, indolently watching the world pass by you, waiting for someone or something to catch and hold your attention, to generate a tremor of interest. There's a curious frisson in the city's atmosphere today, almost spring-like, though spring is long gone, but you recognize that slight vernal restlessness in the people going by, that stirring of potential in the air, that possibility of audacity - though what audacities they might be, here in Vienna, who can say? Still, your eyes are open, you are unusually poised, ready for anything - any crumb, any flung coin - that the world might casually toss your way.
     And then you see - to your right - a young man striding out of the Hofgarten park. He is in his late twenties, almost handsome in a conventional way, buy your eye is drawn to him because he is hatless, an anomaly in this busy crowed of Viennese folk, all hatted, men and women. And, as this young almost conventionally handsome man walks purposefully past you, you note his fine brown, brezze-brown hair, his pale gray suite and his highly polished oxblood shoes. He's of medium height but broad-shouldered with something of a sportsman's build and balance, you register, as he goes by, a couple of paces from you. He's clean-shaven - also unusual in this place, the city of facial hair - and you observe that his coat is well tailored, cut tight at the waist. Folds of an ice-blue silk handkerchief spill easily from his breast pocket. There is something fastidious and deliberate about the way he dresses himself - just as he's almost conventionally handsome, so is he also almost a dandy. You decide to follow him for a minute or so, vaguely intrigued and having nothing better to do.
     At the entry to Michaeler Platz he stops abruptly, pauses, stares at something stuck to hoarding and then continues on his way, briskly, as if he's running slightly late for an appointment. You follow him around the square and into Herrengasse - the slanting sunrays picking out the details on the grand, solid buildings, casting shape, dark shadows on the caryatids and the friezes, the pediments and the cornices, the balusters and the architraves. He stops at the kiosk selling foreign newspapers and magazines. He chooses The Graphic and pays for it, unfolding and opening it yo glace the headlines. 
Ah, he's English - how uninteresting - your curiosity is waning. You turn round and wander back towards the pentangular patch of sunlight you abandoned on the corner, hoping some more stimulating possibilities will come your way, leaving the young Englishman to stride on to whomever he was so intently heading...

----
This is the first page of this book and I find to be a great beginning to something. I can clearly see this young almost conventionally handsome man walking down the streets in Vienna.

Skippy Dies - Paul Murray (1)

'What I don't understand,' Geoff says, 'is why did the first fish, like the one who started land animals, suddenly decided one day to just leave the sea? Like, to leave everything he knew, to go flipping around on a land where no one had ever evolved yet for him to talk to?' He shakes his head, 'He was a brave fish, definitely, and we owe him a lot, for staring  life on land and everything? But I think he must have been very depressed.'

This is the book that we're all hyping at work right now. For so many reasons. ~700 pages of witty, sad, weird (Irish) boarding school drama with all that comes with that. And Skippy, he dies in the first five pages. I have 300 pages left so I better get to it.

American Gods - Neil Gailman (2)

The three children went to the local church to hear the traveling preacher on Sundays, and they went to the little school to learn their letters and their fanners; while Essie also made sure they knew the mysteries of the piskies, which were the most important mysteries there were: redheaded men, with eyes and clothes as green as a river and turned-up noses, funny, squinting men who would, if they got a mind to, turn you and twist you and lead you out of your way, unless you had salt in your pocket, or a little bread. When the children went off to school, they each of them carried a little salt in one pocket, a little bread in the other, the old symbols of life and the earth, to make sure they came safely home once more, and they always did.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (7)

'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic then any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass'.

American Gods - Neil Gaiman (1)

"How was the funeral?" he asked.
"It's over," said Shadow.
"You want to talk about it?"
"No," said Shadow.
"Good." Wednesday grinned. "Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence."

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (6)

Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities in the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least knowing you were headed for shore.

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (1)

Then while he went hauwww hauww hauww like a doggie I tried the same style as for Georgie, banking all on one move-up, cross, cut-and I felt the britva go just deep enough in the meat of old Dim's wrist and he dropped his snaking oozy yelping like a little child. Then he tried to drink in all the blood from his wrist and howl at the same time, and there was to much krovvy to drink and he went bubble bubble, the red like fountaining our lovely, but not for very long.

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (1)

The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.

The Stranger - Albert Camus (1)

I remember it was a Sunday, and that put me off; I've never cared for Sundays. So I turned my head and lazily sniffed the smell of brine that Marie's head had left on the pillow. I slept until ten. After that I stayed in bed until noon, smoking cigarettes. I decided not to lunch at Céleste's restaurant as I usually did; they'd be sure to pester me with questions, and I disliked being questioned.
So I fried some eggs and ate them off the pan. I did without bread as there wasn't any left, and I couldn't be bothered going down to buy it.

On the Road - Jack Kerouac (3)

In the West he'd spent a third of his time in the poolhall, a third in jail, and a third in the public library. They'd seen him rushing eagerly down the winter streets, bareheaded, carrying books to the poolhall, or climbing trees to get into the attics of buddies where he spent days reading or hiding from the law.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (5)

All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic book survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag, It didn't come from the Government, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals."

The Housekeeper + The Professor - Yoko Ogawa (1)

I remembered something the Professor had said: "The mathematical order is beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world. Life isn't going to be easier, nor is anyone going to make a fortune, just because they know something about prime number. Of course, lots of mathematical discoveries have practical applications, no matter how esoteric they may seem. Research on ellipses made it possible to determine the orbits of the planets, and Einstein used non-Euclidean geometry to describe the form of the universe. Every prime number were used during the war to create codes-to cite a regrettable example. But those things aren't the goal of mathematics. The only goal is to discover the truth."

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (4)

He lay far across the room form her, on a winter island separated by an empty sea. She talked to him for what seemed a long while and she talked about this and she talked about that and it was only words, like the words he had heard once in a nursery at a friend's house, a two-year-old child building word patterns, talking jargon, making pretty sounds in the air. But Montag said nothing and after a long while when he only made the small sounds, he felt her move in the room and come to his bed and stand over him and put her hand down to feel his cheek. He knew that when she pulled her hand away from his face it was wet.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (3)

"But most of all," she said, "I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what?"
"What?"
"People don't talk about anything."
"Oh, they must!"
"No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimmingpools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else. And most of the time in the cafes they have the jokeboxes on and the same joke most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the coloured patterns running up and down, but it's only colour and all abstract. And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract. That's all there is now. My uncle says it was different once. A long time back sometimes pictures said things or even showed people."

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (2)

He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.

On the Road - Jack Kerouac (2)

[...] for one of the biggest troubles hitchhiking is having to talk to innumerable people, make them fell that they didn't make a mistake picking you up, even entertain them almost, all of which is a great strain when you're going all the way and don't plan to sleep in hotels.

The Road - Corman McCarthy (2)

They carried armloads of dead limbs up the black stairs through the kitchen and into the diningroom and broke them to length and stuffed the fireplace full. He lit the fire and smoke curled up over the painted wood lintel and rose to the ceiling and curled down again. He fanned the blaze with a magazine and soon the flue began to draw and the fire roared in the room lighting up the walls and the ceiling and the glass chandelier in its myraid facets. The flame lit the darkening glass of the window where the boy stood in hooded silhouette like a troll come in from the night. He seemed stunned by the heat. The man pulled the sheets off the long Empire table in the center of the room and shook them out and made a nest of them in front of the hearth. He sat the boy down and pulled off his shoes and pulled off the dirty rags with which his feet were wrapped. Everything's okay, he whispered. Everything's okay. 

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (1)

"I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about thing like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecking place with the big steel ball. Or go you in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lamp-posts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hub.caps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right, I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is wither shouting or dancing around like wild or bearing up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?"
"You sound very old."

On the Road - Jack Kerouac (1)

They rushed down the street together, digging everything in the early way they had, which later became so much sadder and perceptive and blank. But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploring like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the clue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany? Wanting dearly to learn how to write like Carlo, the first thing you know, Dean was attacking him with a great amorous soul such as only a con-man can have. "Now, Carlo, let me speak-here's what I'm saying..." I didn't see them for about two weeks, during which time they cemented their relationship to fiendish allday-allnight talk proportions.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy (1)

They camped in a bench of land on the far side of a frozen roadside creek. The wind had blown the ash from the ice and the ice was black and the creek looked like a path of basalt winding through the woods. They collected firewood from the north side of the slope where it was not so wet, pushing over whole trees and dragging them into camp. They got the fire going and spread their tarp and hing their wet clothes on poles to steam and stink and they sat wrapped in the quilts naked while the man held the boy's feet against his stomach to warm them.