Relatively Recent Reading: Nov-Dec 2010

[extrajoker]

I figure I ought to catalog the last of my 2010 reading before the first quarter of 2011 draws to a close. So here it is.

NOVEMBER

• Freak Babylon: An Illustrated History of Teratology & Freakshows by Jack Hunter (175 pp.)
  first line: "Man has always distorted his world."
  
  
• Underground by Kat Richardson (341 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "If ghosts and monsters had someone else to harass, my life would have been a lot quieter, like it was before I died."
  first line (of the first chapter): "My knee ached in a way my physical therapist called 'good' but I called 'annoying.'"
  
  
• The Fate of the Artist by Eddie Campbell (92 pp.) (graphic novel)
  first line: "One day the artist wakes up with the disquieting feeling that it has all gone wrong."
  
  
• Zombie Blondes by Brian James (232 pp.)
  first line: "There aren't any rules to running away from your problems."

DECEMBER

• Words at Play: Palindromes, Riddles, Malapropisms, and Other Wonderful Word Games by Willard R. Espy (272 pp.)
  first line (of the introduction): "Any fair-minded person must concede that words are not tools of communication in the way that, say, frowns and kisses are."
  
  
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer V: Predators and Prey by Jane Espenson et al., with art by Georges Jeanty, et al. (graphic novel)
  
  
• The Sandman Presents: Thessaly, Witch for Hire by Bill Willingham, with art by Shawn McManus, et al. (graphic novel)
  
  
• Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman (117 pp.)
  first line: "There was a boy called Odd, and there was nothing strange or unusual about that, not in that time or place."
  
  
• The Other Ones by Jean Thesman (181 pp.)
  first line: "I was the first one who saw her."
  
  
• Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, w/afterword by Ann Patchett (236 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "My friend Stephen and I used to do pony parties together."
  first line (of the first chapter): "Ker-pow!"
  
  
• Drawn to Nature: Through the Journals of Clare Walker Leslie by Clare Walker Leslie (176 pp.)
  first line (of the foreword, by Bill McKibben): "Although it may first appear that Clare Walker Leslie is engaged in teaching people how to draw or how to keep a journal, this seems to me clearly secondary."
  first line (of the introduction): "It was the striking pink glow of the new moon's thin curve, hanging just over our blackened western mountains, that caught me standing dead still in the road one steamy July evening."
  first line (of the first chapter): "You might say you have no nature around you where you live."