The Last American Vampire by Seth Grahame-Smith
Burmese Days by George Orwell
Persuader (Jack Reacher, Book 7) by Lee Child
The Enemy (Jack Reacher, Book 8) by Lee Child
One Shot (Jack Reacher, Book 9) by Lee Child
The Hard Way (Jack Reacher, Book 10) by Lee Child
Archer & Armstrong Volume 6: American Wasteland by Fred Van Lente and Pere Perez
The Legend of Luther Strode by Justin Jordan and Tradd Moore
Excerpts:
The Last American Vampire
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T.S. Eliot
“Famous murderers are only famous because they get caught. The best killers are those whose names we shall never know.”
The Tall Man wasn’t the least bit religious, but he’d come to believe in a kind of Cosmic Wheel. There were undeniable connections between certain individuals. And there was such a thing as fate. Oh, he believed it with every part of his being. You could keep your Christ and your Buddha and whatever superstitious man-made nonsense you liked, but there was no denying the existence of fate.
Why risk everything to go off into the unknown? But we were madly in love and young. And big decisions come easily when you’re young.
Heaven for climate, Hell for company. —Mark Twain
...along comes a bloke, says, ‘ ’Ere, drink this.’ Next thing I know I can see in the dark and run fast as a dog. Best bloody thing that ever ’appened to me. Sleep all day, strong as ten men, get to live forever? What’s not to like?” “How about the fact that we’re murderers? The fact that everyone we know and love will pass to dust before our eyes? That we’re confined to the shadows of the world?” “I been with over two thousand women. You know that? That’s not braggin’, neither. That’s a plain and simple truth, that is. Young ones, old ones, skinny ones, fat ones. Light ones, dark ones, in-between ones. Ones that’s been with a hundred men, ones that’s been with none. Yeah, some of ’em was ugly, but some of ’em was about the most beautiful things you ever saw. I been with ’em in every part of the world, and I done things with ’em no living man could imagine. And you wanna know somethin’? Now that I think about it, I done most’a them things in the dark, on a bed, with the shades pulled shut. The shadows of the world is just fine, thanks.” Henry was, once again, stunned into silence. “Perspective,” said Duell. “That’s your problem, ’tis. I’m a vampire. I love killin’, I love fuckin’, and I love watching the world go by. That’s what I am. Question is, what the ’ell are you?”
You know the saying “possession is nine-tenths of the law”? In my experience, intentions are nine-tenths of a man’s character.
No matter how long you live, there’ll always be a future just beyond your reach.
“A fear of death,” Twain continued, “follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Life is often like that. We write the fantasy of what will be in our heads, and more often than not, reality falls short of our wild expectations. But I was grateful, all the same.
“We are time’s subjects,” said Henry, “and time bids be gone.”
There are dozens of pictures—you’ve probably seen some of them; everyone should see them: black bodies hanging from trees, from telegraph poles, bridges. Broken necks. Blood running from their noses. And in almost every one of these pictures, you’ll see a group of white faces staring back at the camera defiantly. Faces smiling, pointing, even laughing at the dangling bodies. And you realize, This is their keepsake of the moment. This is their community, coming together to right a wrong—no judge, no jury, no consequences. Just some townsfolk and a rope. They don’t see anything wrong with it. They’re proud of it. The majority of their victims were young black men, some of them tortured before they were hanged. Some with fingers, limbs, genitals, missing. Almost all were savagely beaten before their deaths. In one picture, no less than ten young black men—some of them just boys—are hanging from the same tree. What their alleged crimes were, I had no idea. It didn’t matter to their murderers, and it didn’t matter to me.
What’s that quote? The one from the Hitchcock film? “We all go a little mad sometimes.” I suppose I did.
There are certain constants in the laws of human nature. Like the speed of light, they’re fixed and universal. And the biggest one of them all, the one constant that thundered down the mountain long before Moses and his stone tablets, is this: each generation will hold the next in contempt and cherish the imaginary memory of “the way things used to be.” It’s as baked into our bones as the need to breathe and screw...
Persuader
"I think if a thing feels right, you should do it.” “That’s your philosophy?” I looked away. “It’s the voice of experience,” I said. “I once said no when I wanted to say yes and I lived to regret it.”
...overall, after you canceled out a few layers of contradiction, Leon approved of revision. He approved of it big time. Mainly because revision was about thinking, and he figured thinking never hurt anybody.
"Cops put things right.” “What things?” “They look after people. They make sure the little guy is OK.” “That’s it? The little guy?” I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Not really. I don’t really care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.” “You produce the right results for the wrong reasons, then.” I nodded. “But I try to do the right thing. I think the reasons don’t really matter. Whatever, I like to see the right thing done.”
The Enemy
"“Where are you from?” I asked her. “Atlanta,” she said. “What’s your name?” “Sin,” she said. “Spelled S, i, n.” I was fairly certain that was a professional alias.
“Life,” Joe said. “What a completely weird thing it is. A person lives sixty years, does all kinds of things, knows all kinds of things, feels all kinds of things, and then it’s over. Like it never happened at all.” “We’ll always remember her.” “No, we’ll remember parts of her. The parts she chose to share. The tip of the iceberg. The rest, only she knew about. Therefore the rest already doesn’t exist. As of now.”
Life was unfolding the same way it always had for everyone. Sooner or later you ended up an orphan. There was no escaping it. It had happened that way for a thousand generations. No point in getting all upset about it.
One Shot
Get your retaliation in first was his credo. Show them what they’re dealing with.
Some of the sidewalk trees had faded yellow ribbons tied around them. Reacher guessed they symbolized solidarity with troops serving overseas. Which conflict, he wasn’t sure. What the point was, he had no idea. He had served overseas for most of thirteen years and had never met anyone who cared what was tied to trees back home. As long as someone sent paychecks and food and water and bullets, and wives stayed faithful, most guys were happy enough.
“The existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions.”
The Hard Way
“Do you know what a private military corporation is really for? Fundamentally?” “Fundamentally its purpose is to allow the Pentagon to escape Congressional oversight.” “Exactly,” Patti said. “They’re not necessarily better fighters than people currently enlisted. Often they’re worse, and they’re certainly more expensive. They’re there to break the rules. Simple as that. If the Geneva Conventions get in the way, it doesn’t matter to them, because nobody can call them on it. The government is insulated.”
Reading Burmese Days in Burma/Myanmar. I just blew your mind.
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