Thursday Thirteen - Edition 56 for me - Clever Writing

My brother, Terrell, presents "a poem to start the week" on his blog each Monday. This Monday, filled with hope born of listening to weather forecasts, he presented the poem, "Snow Day" by Billy Collins. The language of the poem captured my attention. It included such phrases as "the dog will porpoise through the drifts." As Terrell questioned, where else will you find the verb porpoise?

In his introduction to the poem, Terrell himself used some interesting wording. Reading his words, I could see the disappointment that students and teachers experience when a forecast snow does not materialize - "....anticipated snow turns to drizzle and teachers and students must trudge to school through knee deep disappointment."

With these clever wordings fresh in my mind, I searched out my notes on recent reading, and I present these

Thirteen lines I enjoyed in recent reading:

from A Superior Death by Nevada Barr:

• “Women could sit with grief, hold its hand, watch it pour from the eyes of friends and children, lie down beside it and help it to rest. Their delicate strength would weave a net strong as spun steel, keep the widow Castle from hitting bottom.”
  
• “You know the saddest part?” Anna said. “She hasn’t got a sister to tell her stories.”
  
• “No one in the Walters family will ever be skinny. It indicates a stinginess of spirit.”
  
• “The sky had cried itself out the night before and smiled down clear and warm.
  
• “The rest of the afternoon Anna spent taking her medicinal….” (she hiked and enjoyed the out-of-doors) “She breathed it in like a narcotic and felt her brain losing its ferret ways, ceasing to chase around in her skull.” (My ferret brain has been known to spend an entire night chasing around in my skull.)
  
• “Beginning, middle and end,” she said, “or I don’t want to hear any of the story.”


• “Greed made theft easy and murder possible.”

From Lawrence Sanders's The Fourth Deadly Sin:

• "...some hair on his upper lip that yearned to be a mustache and didn't quite make it.

From Lisa Scottoline's Daddy's Girl:

• The first line of the book: "Nat Greco felt like an A cup in a double D bra."

From Harlan Coben's Just One Look:

• "...t-shirt draped half-in, half-out of the hamper as if it'd been shot trying to escape."


• "...a discount clothing store where hip goes to die."


• "Her pulse started giddying up."

From Nevada Barr's Track of the Cat:

• "Though she would have liked to cry for another hour -- another day-- to flush the fear and helplessness from her soul, she found herself smiling."