Rob Baker > Recent Status Updates

Had to switch to percentage of completion mode since I'm reading the large print version and it has 418 pages...

"Building a civilization is ugly, Jasmine. But the alternative is no civilization at all" (273).

"'He's right. I'm an asshole. But Artemis needs an asshole right now and I got drafted'" (298).

"It's one of the stupidest things I've ever done. And that's a field of intense competition" (251)

"I drank tea so much I had to job to the communal bathroom every twenty minutes. After hours of work, I came to a conclusion: I really wanted my own bathroom.

But by the end of it, I had a plan. And like all good plans, it required a crazy Ukranian guy" (75).

"He smirked in a very punchable way" (11).

I'm reading the large print edition because it's the only one our library had. Thought it might be annoying but it's not bad. I get through page quicker. Makes me feel like a speed reader :)

On the plus side: Set in NM; mysterious ghost cows; a strange, aggressive man only our hero sees

Minus side: Two spit takes already (any book or movie with a spit take automatically loses at least a half star :)

Only if I move my arm a certain way,
it comes back.
Or the way the light bends in the trees
this time of year,
so a scrap of sorrow, like a bird, lights on the heart...

...But they guard me, these small pains,
from growing sure
of myself and perhaps forgetting.

--from "To Hear the Falling World", 48

One of the hijackers bought his airplane ticket a couple of days before 9/11, and he signed up for a Frequent Flyer account.

They use the term "static" 'to describe the confusion, inconsistencies, and sheer volume of intelligence, which makes it very difficult to pick out ahead of time the few items that seem in retrospect to be crucial' (129).

"......Einstein called time what stops everything
from happening at once" (25).

In 1996, bin Laden issued a fatwa calling on "'every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewared to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.'

"'The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it'" (90).

"Like most of the passengers on flight 93, Jeremy Glick led a life striking for its openness.

That is what puts him in such stark contrast with the group of dark, clandestine figures who killed him and the 39 other people on flight 93. We cannot comprehend the people who perpetrated the crime, even as the people it was perpetrated against seem so guileless, almost innocent of the dark forces that destroyed them."

"A day just ends

Its dusk comes simply
without opinion or hesitation.

A fork still fits hand,
shoes fit feet,
on this day, like any other.

She closed her eyes,
opened her mouth
to receive the end of her life.

It's last tasting" (18).

Although yesterday I went to the library and got four books, I decided first to pick up a book I've had sitting on my shelves for years.

"Today, when I could do nothing,
I saved an ant....

It must have first walked
the morning paper, as if loosened ink
taking the shape of an ant" (10).

"I studied much and remembered little.
But the world is generous, it kept offering figs and cheeses" ("Tin", 5)

"Then one morning everything changed" (275).

Giant turning points in peopel's lives are always so interesting and instructional to read about.

“It’s a thousand times harder to come back then to become” (242).