Seen Reading will be taking a wee vacation. Posts will resume June 4, 2007.

Be seein’ ya!

East Indian woman, early 20s, wearing a red tank top and jean capris, gold bracelets chiming on both wrists.

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, Sophie Kinsella (Dell)

Page 56:

I have no clothes. This cannot be happening.

When the doors open she’s promised herself that she will put down the book and look people in the eyes. One. Two. Three. Four. When she reaches 356, a number of no significance, she will allow herself to be open to surprise. She’s tired of check marks, lists of pros and cons, what her horoscope defines as the best course of action. Today she will simply gaze upon another, upon you, and fall.

Caucasian male, late 40s-early 50s, wearing beige pants, loose around the waist, a crumpled plaid dress shirt and blue cotton jacket. The sign reads “Out of Home and Work”. He sits cross-legged, his pet rat running around his lap and shoulders.

Grift Sense, James Swain (Ballantine)

Page 101:

During his twenty years working the casinos in Atlantic City, he had kept a profile of every hustler he’d ever come into contact with, jotting down their patterns, habits, vices, and idiosyncrasies. A hustler might change his appearance, he reasoned, but he could never change who he was.

The rat runs over his fingers, in between, rolling, easy, like poker chips, the sensation of felt grazing his wrist.

Caucasian woman, late 20s, with blonde bob, wearing maroon cords and black windbreaker, carrying a MEC shoulder bag, cell phone clipped to the strap. She leans forward in her seat to accommodate the overstuffed back pack she keeps on for two stops until she hops off into the street.

The One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard & Spencer Johnson (William Morrow & Company)

Page 33:

“As you can see, there are four categories of daily activities that we all face.”

The things we want to do and have to do;
The things we have to do but don’t want to do;
The things we want to do but don’t have to do;
The things we don’t want to do and don’t have to do.

A plastic step stool, scuffed and greying. Fuzzy covers masking the stir ups. A Christmas card thumbtacked to the cork board. It’s almost June. Tears mark the cushion’s edge of a lopsided swivel chair. Rust rims the base of the examination table. Paint chips away from the wall. A plant fossilizes on the desk. She shifts her weight, her tail bone aching, feeling as broken as the rest of this lot.

Black woman, early 30s, wearing beige pants, dark blue top and blue-and-white polka dot headband pushing the loose curls from her forehead.

Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela (Back Bay Books)

Page 203:

We were taken in sealed police vans escorted by a half-dozen troop carriers filled with armed soldiers. One would have thought a full-scale civil war was under way from the precautions the state was taking with us.

A man enters the train, takes the seat across from her and mutters at the floor. His brow is furrowed; deep creases. His eyes are wide, steeled and glassy. His rage sits in his shoulders and fists, clenched. His thighs tense and he leans forward, rocking, rubbing the back of his head with one hand, the other poking his temple repeatedly in the form of a gun. I look away, to her. Her chest is heaving, the musculature of her face suppressing tears.

Caucasian woman, early 50s, wearing taupe from head-to-toe, a bright orange umbrella resting on her lap, a plastic knife acting as her bookmark.

Two Alone, Sandra Brown (Mira)

Groaning, he thrashed through the woods, viciously determined to keep his thoughts on track. As soon as he built the shelter, such close proximity wouldn’t be necessary. He would keep his eyes and his hands –

The piercing scream brought him up short.

She turned the knife slowly in her hand, ran her thumb along the serrated edge and lifted it to her nose, faint bitter peel of citrus, lime, to be exact, a wedge, to be more precise, on a checkered blanket, atop bristly grass, in a quiet patch of park, beside a rippling stream and old knotted oak, sipping the one gin and tonic she used to share with her lover every summer Sunday, their nails fresh and painted after a morning of pampering.

————

See you Tuesday!

Caucasian woman, late 60s, wearing a pink tank top and white shorts, looking at a spot on the pavement just past her crossed ankles.

Missing Mom, Joyce Carol Oates (Harper Perennial)

About page 35:

Suddenly we were speaking in low excited voices. My heart was beating with painful clarity, unless it was my mother’s heart beating. I could not breathe, she was sucking the oxygen out of the room. I wanted to push her from me, I was frightened of her power.

She invites her granddaughter to the table for tea, placing shortbread cookies on a chipped china plate and swinging her arm over the back of her chair. The drapes flutter in the window behind her as a cargo train steams by. Her gaze settles on her granddaughter’s face, tracing the line of her cheekbones, lost in a far away grin. She’s counting cars.

Caucasian woman, early 60s, wearing a canary-yellow linen blouse and white capris, a plastic bag of emptied pistachio shells sitting beside her.

P.D. James, The Lighthouse (Seal Books)

Page 167:

Professor Glenister stood for a moment silently contemplating the corpse, then gently she touched the muscles of the face and neck and moved to test the joints of each of the fingers curved over the lower sheet as if half-clutching it in death.

She’s lived in this neighbourhood her whole life. She rings the bell and glides up to the front, gently steadying herself on the back of seats, reaching out to clutch a bar. The bus lowers and she steps gingerly onto the curb. The night is warm. I open the window and the breeze carries in fish and pastries. She bends to tighten the velcro straps of her white running shoes then power walks past the man on the bike, drunk and cat calling a brick wall.

Hispanic woman, mid 30s, wearing a long sleeved black tee with white and pink floral pattern, thin silver chain link necklace, holding a “tna” bag between her ankles.

Body Dump, Fred Rosen (Pinnacle-Kensington)

Page 61:

The cops began seriously wondering now. After getting past the obtuse possibility that all four women were now living the life of Riley on some beach somewhere, they came to the inescapable conclusion that someone had eliminated them.

A woman ran the subway doors as they closed, her back pack and left arm stuck in the gap. A litany of curses spilled from her lips, her patchwork bandana askew on her mop of short, curly blonde hair. She leaned forward like an ox pulling a sleigh and vaulted into the car, landing beside the reading woman, upsetting her coffee, the book sheltering a small patch over her lap.

Caucasian woman, mid 20s, with long, black hair twirled into a tail that hangs over her shoulder, wearing a long sleeved tee and faded jeans with rip in the knee. She huddles close to the end of the bench, drawing her bag close to her, shifting uncomfortably and the sun hides behind the clouds once more.

Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels (Emblem/McClelland and Stewart)

Page 119:

He often applied the geologic to the human, analyzing social change as he would a landscape; slow persuasion and catastrophe. Explosions, seizures, floods, glaciation. He constructed his own historical topography.

She spent the morning sitting on the edge of the bed, toes digging into the carpet. He stayed on his back, arms tucked behind his head and tried not to breathe. While she searched for the words she ran her fingers over her brow, kneading her forehead, lost in rhythmic sensation, stuck in a thought, that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d shown herself such care.