Tag: teaser tuesday

The power of saying good night each night to Lena is great. On the first night that Lena was gone, Vaclav said good night to her, put the good night out into the scary, lonely darkness, and meant each word in a very specific way. Good night. Good night. He wanted her to have a… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

Today’s Teaser Tuesday is just one line. The best first line of a novel that I’ve read in a while. Hello, this is Paul Chowder, and I’m going to try to tell you everything I know. -From The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, page 1 _____ Teaser Tuesdays is a fun weekly bookish meme, hosted by… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

For the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball — better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest — laughing heartily if it went right, and not less heartily if it went… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

When children are lonely, they invent imaginary friends to talk to. Adults such as myself invent imaginary television shows to keep the howling dogs of alienation at bay. Nobody is lonely in a sitcom. The characters show up at bars, diners, or sporting events, and everyone they know is already there. I often think that… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

Three years have passed since he could accurately describe himself as a visitor to the staffroom, but the surreality of being here, amidst these figures of terror or hilarity from his youth – these imagos, these caricatures, now ambling around him, saying good morning, making tea, acting as if they were normal people – still… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

She began walking again, south towards The Mound. ‘Live each day as if it’s your last,’ that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn’t practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

Nobody knows how many whales were killed during the great age of whaling, but one estimate suggests that about 300,000 were slaughtered in the four decades or so to 1870. That may not seem an especially vast number, but then whale numbers were not vast to begin with. In any case, the hunting was enough… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

What kind of woman has a saffron quilt on her bed? Wears a white linen dressing gown? Keeps beside her bed a stack of gardening books? Stores all her clothes in a shabby antique wardrobe, with a mirror built into its door? Who is she when she is in this room, alone and unobserved, and… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

To figure out how best to prevent motion sickness, you first need to figure out how best to bring it on. Aerospace research has excelled at the latter, if not the former, and perhaps nowhere more triumphantly than at the U.S. Naval Aerospace Medical Institute in Pensacola, Florida: the birthplace of the human disorientation device.… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

In 1943, when Ireland was officially in Emergency mode, an American B-17 Flying Fortress en route from Marrakesh to England got lost and went off course. Almost out of fuel, the crew of the T’ain’t-a-Bird made a forced, unscheduled landing in White’s Marsh, outside Clonakilty. Looking out, the crew of ten thought they were in… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday

All immediate hints of purpose went out of the rooms themselves. Showers in kitchens, toilets in living rooms, sinks in bedrooms. It was as if Picasso were born a slumlord instead of a painter. Nothing was where you thought it would be, which would be eccentric in a mansion but was disarming in an apartment.… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday