{"id":556,"date":"2006-09-01T10:44:27","date_gmt":"2006-09-01T10:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/01\/seventeen-books-answers\/"},"modified":"2006-09-01T10:44:27","modified_gmt":"2006-09-01T10:44:27","slug":"seventeen-books-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/01\/seventeen-books-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventeen Books Answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are the answers to last week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/08\/classic_edition_seventeen_book.php#more\">list of quotes from seventeen books<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1) &#8220;The way to a man&#8217;s heart is through his chest.&#8221; <strong><cite>Use of Weapons<\/cite>, Iain Banks<\/strong>. This one was a little sneaky, as it&#8217;s in the poem on the opening page.<\/li>\n<li>2) &#8220;&#8230;<cite>Highly Unpleasant Things It Is Sometimes Necessary to Know<\/cite>&#8230;&#8221; <strong><cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/library\/0503.html#051903\">One for the Morning Glory<\/a><\/cite>, John Barnes<\/strong>. A surprisingly delightful little book from an author whose other works inspired the rule &#8220;John Barnes books containing forcible sodomy are bad.&#8221; (Nothing was said about dinosaurs.)<\/li>\n<li>3) &#8220;All is waves, with nothing waving, across no distance at all.&#8221; <strong><cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/library\/0703.html#071303\">Songs of Earth and Power<\/a><\/cite>, Greg Bear<\/strong>. As I noted in comments to Friday&#8217;s post, if I ever lose my mind and write a quantum mechanics book, this will be in there somewhere.<\/li>\n<li>4) &#8220;The tiny scout departed the universe in a manner that was picturesque, if ultimately lethal.&#8221; <strong><cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/library\/1203.html#122103\">Startide Rising<\/a><\/cite>, David Brin<\/strong>. OK, he&#8217;s a little crazy, and can be unpleasant in person, but this remains the only book I&#8217;ve needed to replace because I read my first copy until it fell apart, and I still love it.<\/li>\n<li>5) &#8220;He&#8217;s an actor. I guess he can&#8217;t be that good, or he wouldn&#8217;t be killing people for a living.&#8221; <strong><cite>Thank You for Smoking<\/cite>, Christopher Buckley<\/strong>. Late in the book, Peter Lorre is revealed to be an international assassin. This isn&#8217;t one of the silliest plot points. A great Washington satire.<\/li>\n<li>6) &#8220;Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings,&#8230;&#8221; <strong>&#8220;The Djinn in the Nightingale&#8217;s Eye,&#8221; A. S. Byatt<\/strong>. The story doesn&#8217;t quite live up to that opening, but it&#8217;s good. I keep meaning to write a blog post riffing off part of that quote, and not getting around to it.<\/li>\n<li>7) &#8220;On the day of the dead when the year too dies\/ Must the youngest open the oldest hills\/ Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.&#8221; The quote is the basis for the plot of <strong><cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/library\/0502.html#052202\">The Grey King<\/a><\/cite> by Susan Cooper<\/strong>, but it appears in most of the books of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/library\/0104.html#010204\">The Dark is Rising<\/a> series. Nobody writes better prophetic doggerel.<\/li>\n<li>8) &#8220;Now if thou wilt confess thy sins unto me and accept me as thy Savior, thou wilt be born again of water and of the Spirit and dwell in Paradise, a small town in Utah.&#8221; <strong><cite>Blackburn<\/cite>, Bradley Denton<\/strong>. Maybe the best sympathetic serial killer novel I&#8217;ve ever read. The Prophet Morton is great fun.<\/li>\n<li>9) &#8220;You know from the first Cinemascope frame&#8230;&#8221; <strong>&#8220;Troy: The Movie,&#8221; John M. Ford<\/strong>. I copied it from <cite>From the End of the Twentieth Century<\/cite>, but you can also find it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.strangehorizons.com\/2002\/20020429\/troy.shtml\">online<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>10) &#8220;&#8230; The physicists were studying the beginning, so they rushed to describe or bring about the end.&#8221; <strong><cite>As She Climbed Across the Table<\/cite>, Jonathan Lethem<\/strong>. A terrific little book about love, obsession, and academia.<\/li>\n<li>11) &#8220;&#8230;He wishes there were books about girls, the way there are books about Mars, that you could observe the orbits and brightness of girls through telescopes without appearing to be perverted.&#8221; <strong>&#8220;Magic for Beginners,&#8221; Kelly Link<\/strong> (from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/library\/2005_07_01_libarchive.php#112147581425646132\">collection of the same name<\/a>). A terrific collection of slightly surreal short stories.<\/li>\n<li>12) &#8220;I&#8217;ll buy you all kinds of chew toys&#8211; a squeaky duck if you want.&#8221; &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, Tommy, but I can&#8217;t turn into a wolf.&#8221; <strong><cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/library\/0202.html#022702\">Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story<\/a><\/cite>, Christopher Moore<\/strong>. The title pretty much says it all.<\/li>\n<li>13) &#8220;Try to think of it as an Experience, like something Winnie the Pooh might get involved in; Floating in Space while Awaiting Rescue. Like that.&#8221; <strong><cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/library\/1201.html#122001\">The Long Run<\/a><\/cite>, Daniel Keys Moran<\/strong>. It&#8217;s a pity he&#8217;s a Difficult author, because this book is such great fun.<\/li>\n<li>14) &#8220;But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid&#8211; <i>that had to mean something<\/i>.&#8221; <strong><cite>The Silent Gondoliers<\/cite>, S. Morgenstern<\/strong>. The first work in English by the great Florinese author.<\/li>\n<li>15) &#8220;Can you name the six noble gases?&#8230;&#8221; <strong><cite>The Moon&#8217;s Fire-Eating Daughter<\/cite>, John Myers Myers<\/strong>. I used this on the dedication page of my Ph.D. thesis on collisions in metastable xenon. The book itself isn&#8217;t that great, but it&#8217;s hard to find good lines from literature mentioning xenon.<\/li>\n<li>16) &#8220;Sages, seers, and theoretical physicists could only speculate at what, if any, relationship might exist between the Shanghai Police Departmet&#8217;s astonishing scope of activities and actual law enforcement.&#8221; <strong><cite>The Diamond Age<\/cite>, Neal Stephenson<\/strong>. It kind of goes off the rails at the end, but there&#8217;s some great stuff in the beginning.<\/li>\n<li>17) &#8220;You took fifty G outta the Watergate? <i>That&#8217;s<\/i> no third-rate burglary.&#8221; <strong><cite>What&#8217;s the Worst That Could Happen?<\/cite>, Donald E. Westlake<\/strong>. Probably the best of the Dortmunder books. Somebody really ought to think about making a movie of it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are the answers to last week&#8217;s list of quotes from seventeen books:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}