Tag: passages

New Fiction + Book Passage of the Week (12/26/2015)

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If you haven’t already, check out my short story Ghosts, in the Eighth Anniversary issue of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. The story is a reprint, originally published in Terracotta Typewriter. Since Terracotta Typewriter’s gone (and with a cool name like that, it wasn’t long for this world), I thought Ghosts could use another run.

It’s actually from an unpublished novel set in 2007 Wuhan.The book acts as a prequel to Little Red King, featuring a side character from that novel, detailing how he goes from English teacher at Wuhan University to living illegally in Hankou’s back-alleys.

 

Today’s book passage comes from The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane. No commentary; it speaks for itself:

The limestone dunes recalled dreams Danny’d had, ones he’d forgotten about until this moment. Dreams in which he hopelessly crossed vast moonlit deserts with no idea how he’d gotten there, no idea how he’d ever find his way home. And weighing down on him all the heavier with every step was the growing fear that home no longer existed.

Dennis Lehane is a great writer. If you’re looking for a good read, you can’t really go wrong with him.

Book Passage of the Week (12/12/2015) – from Christopher Hitchens

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Tuesday will mark four years since Christopher Hitchens died.

You can read plenty about his career here and it’s always a pleasure to listen to him talk. My favorite is where he shreds Jerry Falwell:

He was a prolific writer too, whether it was exposing Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger or religion. He also supported the Iraq War and never backed down. There’s something to admire about that.

The quote below is from god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. It was one of several atheist books released during the time, along with Sam Harris’s The End of Faith and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Christopher Hitchens is easily the best (and most tolerable) of their little group.

Anyways…

Nothing optional–from homosexuality to adultery — is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash.

And that reminds me: whenever I hear Rick Perry ramble on about homosexuality, I wonder if the bathroom tiles still hurt his knees or if he’s gotten used to it by now.

Book Passage of the Week (11/28/2015)

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This week’s book passage comes from Philalawyer. His book, Happy Hour is for Amateurs, details his life in law and his eventual escape. What he writes about isn’t limited to law. Work sucks, but life doesn’t have to:

To the average law student biting his nails, scribbling notes furiously, chain smoking outside the library and mainlining espresso to stay up studying into the early morning, this thinking is insane. The job is the brass ring, and if you’re not pathologically devoted to “the law”, you’re at odds with almost everyone and everything around you. The statements professors routinely made about commitment to the field—”I never had time to read a newspaper in law school”, or “Law becomes your life”—struck me as signs of mental illness, low intellect, or a person trying to escape himself.

– Philalawyer, Happy Hour Is For Amateurs: Work Sucks. Life Doesn’t Have To.

Check out his blog (on the Internet Archive) and don’t miss his Commencement 2009 speech.