Some Lines from Last Night's Reading

My nightly reading pile grows like that tower from Genesis: right now I am reading from eight books every night: Thackeray's The Adventures of Philip, Collins' The Woman in White, a recent popular science book How to Think like a Neandertal, The Weird Sisters (a modern novel inspired by Macbeth), Swamplandia!, Millhauser's new collection We Others, Nesbo's crime novel The Leopard, and Evanovich's Two for the Dough.

Anyway, last night I came across a few things that I felt worth repeating, for various reasons.

1. from The Woman in White: "Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us service" (62).

2. from How to Think like a Neandertal (2012): "If you want to think like a Neandertal, you must learn to think in stone" (51).  This passage leads to a fascinating description of how these folks made their spear points.

3. And ... another clunker from Evanovich, who seems determined (or, at least, her narrator, Stephanie Plum--in this case, via Ranger, her bounty-hunting buddy--does) to ridicule everyone who's not young, slim, hot, hip.  The two of them are having breakfast; Ranger eats grapefruit; Plum, pancakes (with extra syrup): "Better be careful," Ranger said.  "Nothing uglier than a fat old white woman" (40).

Actually, I can think of one thing uglier ...