Book Beginnings and 56: Crank

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"Life was good

before I

met                    

                        the monster.

After,

life

                       was great.

At

least

                      for a little while."

Hosted by Freda's Voice

And it occurred to me                 for one uneasy moment

that every move I had            made lately might have

started a landslide.

What if I couldn't go back?                  What if I died in the crash?

Almost immediately,                   the monster soothed

       me, confused me          with a deeper question.

What if the ride was worth it?

I mean, who wants to                  trudge through life, doing

everything just right?        Taking no chances means

wasting your dreams.

How can I explain the                  pure chilling rush of

waiting to do something        so basically not right?

No fear. No guilt.

How can I explain                  purposely setting foot on

a path so blatantly         treacherous? Was the

fun in the fall?"

(56% or page 300-301 of Crank. I tried to make the editing look the same, I'm sorry if its not perfect.)

Book Beginnings and 56: Chasing Shackleton

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"I thought I knew Antarctica by now. I had been to its frozen alien shores, a world with no native human population, three times. I had become, to the extent one can, "used" to the highest, coldest windiest continent in the world with its extreme weather and the staggering, kilometers-thick mantle of ice that covers it."

Hosted by Freda's Voice

"More and more modern equipment now went into the boat, but none of it would give us an advantage over Shackleton - it would merely allow us to record the experience for Discovery Channel and the American PBS network. In fact, if anything, the equipment could be seen as a disadvantage, significantly reducing the space on board while increasing electrical hazards and fire risk."

Book Beginnings and 56: A Thousand Splendid Suns

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"Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the harami.

It happened on a Thursday. It must have, because Mariam remembered that she had been restless and preoccupied that day, the way she was only on Thursdays, the day when Jalil visited her at kolba. To pass the time until the moment that she would see him at last, crossing the knee-high grass in the clearing and waving, Mariam had climbed a chair and taken down her mother's Chinese tea set. The tea set was the sole relic that Mariam's mother, Nana, had of her own mother, who had died when Nana was two. Nana cherished each blue-and-white porcelain piece, the graceful curve of the pot's spout, the hand-painted finches and chrysanthemums, the dragons on the sugar bowl, meant to ward off evil.

It was this last piece that slipped from Mariam's fingers, that fell to the wooden floorboards of the kolba and shattered."

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"The first few days, Mariam hardly left her room. She was awakened every dawn for prayer by the distant cry of azan, after which she crawled back into bed."