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(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
Out of String
(Spotlight Runner-Up!)
She read them in order, all the ones by Jean de Brunhoff and then the continuation of the series by his son Laurent. In one of the Laurent ones, Babar Visits Another Planet, Babar and his family travel to space and meet some space elephants. The book contained a line that felt very familiar: "They look like elephants, but they're not elephants." A few pages later, another line in the book had a similar effect: "Babar found he understood what was being said, although he did not know the language."
Jessy Randall
This did give him pause for thought. He knew full well that sooner or later he always said or did something to drive the women in his life away—starting with his mother, who'd complained he'd do just about anything to get attention (he had), and on to his high school sweetheart who put on too much weight (he'd told her so), all the way down the years to Nadine. Possibly they'd still be together if he'd played it differently. If he could have done what? Been kinder, less brutally frank, less selfish? He'd been accused of all these things.
Jo-Anne Rosen
It's a hard pill to swallow. The announcement came a few years ago. Bryan and I watched the televised press conference, amazed. A few egotistical billionaires, who figured they would haunt the rest of us forever, funded the technique. I'm sure they had no intention of sharing the discovery, but someone let the cat out of the bag, and rather than risk pitchforks and the guillotine, they opened the process to everyone. At a reasonable subscription price. So, nothing has changed. They're still billionaires, soon to be trillionaires.
Robert Osborne
Is Suffering a Means Towards Salvation?
Benjamin concedes, for Maxim has clearly laid down his maxim, but the whole affair has succeeded in exhausting the tamer enough that he puts my training session on hiatus, goes out to the back yard—what they call the area behind the wagons with the cages and padrooms—and swigs moonshine alone, as his eyes meander across the collarbones of the bally girls darting in and out of their wagons. But I know there is an end to this hiatus, and I will once again feel my whole body tense from the pressure of the commander, my dancerless body, my round and maladroit body.
René Bennett
He turned from the window and poked around the half-clean kitchen for a soda. He knew Friis wouldn't have a Monster or a Red Bull, but maybe he kept cans of Coke for guests. Well, what guests? Maybe 7UP for mixing cocktails. Anthonie opened the fridge, taking a moment to clean splatters off the front of it with a rag, and found no soda inside. He checked the pantry. The cabinets. There was olive oil from Spain. Wine from France. Coffee from Africa. But no soda pop from Atlanta, Georgia.
John Brandon
Nora and I dawdled for a week as she got her parents' blessing. Then we went to City Hall. To be exact, we rolled into City Hall after pre-celebrating all night at Jim Brady's, a financial district watering hole that had dragged down piece by piece the mahogany bar from the old, shuttered Stork Club in midtown. It felt good to crook, then lean our elbows on it. Hungover, we'd treated two new friends we made there to breakfast at the Pearl Diner before asking Rod and Siobhan—or Tod and Siobhan, I can't remember—to be our witnesses. They said, why not?
Laurence Klavan
I made no effort to seek her out. I knew I didn't need to. Sooner or later she would show up with another old guy at her side. Meanwhile I had plenty of time to think about her. I liked the idea of her being a serial killer, collecting her victims' Social Security benefits the way someone else might do day-trading. It would make a good plot for one of the mystery novels my wife was addicted to.
Thomas J. Hubschman
Sakaibara gave the orders, and the committee set about the unenviable task of disinterment. Gary watched through binoculars from his pillbox. The work took several hours. He knew then he was in trouble. The soldiers laid the bodies on the sand like driftwood. He knew they had finished counting when two men looked up and began scanning the island and another started blowing his whistle and people came running from the barracks and watchtowers, some of them carrying machine guns. He was thirsty but remained in his pillbox. He was afraid he had left prints in the sand.
Daniel Brugioni
