O ants crawl my drunken arms
and they let Van Gogh sit in a cornfield
and take Life out of the world with a shotgun,
ants crawl my drunken arms
and they sent Rimbaud
to running guns and looking under rocks for gold,
O ants crawl my drunken arms,
they put Pound in a nuthouse
and made Crane jump into the sea in his pajamas,
ants, ants, crawl my drunken arms
as our schoolboys scream for Willie Mays
instead of Bach.
(from On Drinking by Charles Bukowski)
7½*/10. The complete review is here.
.
Initially the docent had refused to take pity on the man who claimed to have come all the way from America to pray at the Baptistry of San Giovanni in hopes of curing his terrible skin disease. Eventually, though, he had been inspired to become sympathetic, aided no doubt by an offer of five hundred dollars for five minutes alone in the baptistry ... combined with the growing fear that this contagious-looking person would stand there beside him for the next three hours until the building opened.
(from Inferno by Dan Brown)
7½*/10. The complete review is here.
.
.
The
drone nodded. “We were sent out as
cannon fodder. We turned out to be
better at staying alive than expected.
When they attached us to a praetorian regiment, we thought they wanted
us for our survival skills.”
“What did they want you for?”
“Breakfast.”
“So what happened?”
SVN/2187 shrugged. “There was an
unfortunate error. Our commanding
officer accidentally got shot by the entire platoon, and then happened to set
himself on fire and fell down a hole.
And then a bio-grenade rolled down there after him. For some reason, high command decided that we
were responsible.”
(from The Pincers of Death by Toby
Frost)
8*/10. The
complete review is here.
.
 |
“So,”
I said, eyeing him closely, “maybe it’s good there’s no such thing as time
travel.”
He
raised his eyebrows slightly.
“Or to qualify further, no such thing as public access time travel.”
“Exactly. Although the phrase
‘time travel’ is so sci-fi. We don’t do
that. Here at St. Mary’s we investigate major historical events in
contemporary time.”
(from Just One
Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor)
8½*/10. The complete review is here.
.
