“
You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
”
”
Rosemarie Urquico
“
Alright. Let's get realistic now. You know and I know that the function of that number was just to provide some sort of warm-up trash before we do something HEAVY. Something a little bit harder to listen to, but which is probably better for you in the LONG RUN. The item in this instance, which will be better for you in the LONG RUN, and if we only had a little more space up here we could make it visual for you, is "Some Ballet Music," which we've played at most of our concert series in Europe. Generally in halls where we had a little bit more space and Motorhead and Kansas could actually fling themselves across the stage, and give you their teenage interpretation of the art of The Ballet. I don't think it's too safe to do it here, maybe they can just hug each other a little bit and do some calisthenics in the middle of the stage.
”
”
Frank Zappa
“
Yanking at my leg, straining every muscle, my customized Gray Ghost rebuilt as a chopper sparks and squeals.
My boot catches and I'm flipped. Sliding down E-70 Highway on leather, my gloves scrubbed by the tarmac.
”
”
Poppet (Sveta (Neuri, #1))
“
One of the creatures in the front circle shook itself all over and, still shaking, moved very, very slowly toward Spock. He didn't move a muscle. The creature put out a long slender pseudopod, gleaming in the sunshine like suddenly blown glass, and poked Spock's boot with it. Then it made the scratchy sound again, more laughter, and said a word: "Gotcha!" It jumped back into place. All the other creatures began to echo the scratch-laughter. Spock looked around him in mild bemusement. "Captain," he said, "I suspect we have found a kindergarten...
”
”
Diane Duane (Doctor's Orders (Star Trek: The Original Series, #50))
“
It is the first fashionable party I ever attended." "Well," said Dick, "I haven't attended many. When I was a boot-black I found it interfered with my business, and so I always declined all the fashionable invitations I got.
”
”
Horatio Alger Jr. (Ragged Dick : Complete Series (10 books) - Ragged Dick, Fame and Fortune, Mark the Match Boy, Rough and Ready and many more)
“
They say people are more important than stuff. Maybe that’s true, though I think there’s a reason nobody except Brothers and Sisters renounces their possessions. Even the destitute have something they cling to, right? Your stuff is a series of choices that show who you are. Yeah, I went for the black digiplayer with the skulls on, got a problem with that? Yeah, these are the boots my mother says make me look like I’m in the army, this is the shirt my boyfriend loves, that I have to wear a jacket over when I leave the house. That’s the toy turtle my gramma gave me before she died. All I have now is me.
”
”
Amie Kaufman (Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1))
“
A cop lost his temper and rushed into the crowd to seize an agitator … and that was the last we saw of him for about three minutes. When he emerged, after a dozen others had rushed in to save him, he looked like some ragged hippie … the mob had stripped him of everything except his pants, one boot, and part of his coat. His hat was gone, his gun and gunbelt, all his badges and police decorations … he was a beaten man and his name was Lennox. I know this because I was standing beside the big plainclothes police boss who was shouting, “Get Lennox in the van!
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (The Gonzo Papers Series Book 1))
“
Cal opened another cabinet and removed a bottle of anti-inflammatory tablets, placing them on the table in front of her along with the ice pack he snagged from the freezer.
She glanced at him, suspicious. “What’s this?”
“The drug I offer to all of my victims to make them more compliant. It’s ibuprofen,” he said when she glared at him. “It’ll help with the pain and hopefully keep the swelling down. As will the ice. Do you need help taking your boots off?”
“So that it’ll be more difficult for me to run away when you bring out your collection of shrunken human heads?”
“Now you’re catching on.
”
”
Lisa Clark O'Neill
“
He saw her legs first. Ankle boots met her bare calves, and the tops of her knees were hidden under a maroon, long-sleeved body-con dress. His gaze momentarily flitted to her breasts, which were pushed up and toward him. He was only human, after all, and they were really amazing breasts. He was used to seeing her in conservative wardrobe choices for the show, or the casual-date look she'd had at the pumpkin patch and ice-cream shop. In this fitted, sleek dress that showed off every one of her curves, though, she looked...
”
”
Erin La Rosa (For Butter or Worse (The Hollywood Series #1))
“
it was preferable to stand tall in a mud puddle than lick boots in the parlor.
”
”
Ryan Holiday (Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series))
“
Some tyrants are brought to justice by those upon whom their boots have tread. Others simply fade into the fog of war and disappear like with the wind.
”
”
Kent Giles (Operation Grey Wolf: Not all heros wear the victor's uniform. (Burke Eieger Series Book 1))
“
She was once not the nervous sort, but had lately been forced to marry a man who treated her worse than the boot scraper he used to remove the horse manure from his shoes.
”
”
Amy D'Orazio (An Offer of Marriage: A Pride and Prejudice Variation (The Engaged to Mr Darcy Series))
“
You told me that Kafka was not a thinker, and that a "genetic" approach to his work would disclose that much of it was only a kind of very imaginative whining. That was during the period when you were going in for wrecking operations, feeling, I suppose, that the integrity of your own mental processes was best maintained by a series of strong, unforgiving attacks. You made quite an impression on everyone, in those days: you ruffled blouse, you long magenta skirt slit to the knee, the dagger thrust into your boot. "Is that a metaphor?" I asked, pointing to the dagger; you shook your head, smiled, said no.
”
”
Donald Barthelme
“
A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” – Mark Twain The history of our world is the history of the triumph of the lie. The lie is much faster than the truth, and much more emotionally appealing.
”
”
Mike Hockney (The Omega Point (The God Series Book 10))
“
I kicked off my boots and sent them flying, took out a few more monsters. The herd thinned. But there was still a freakin’ herd.
A & E Kirk (2014-05-26). Drop Dead Demons: The Divinicus Nex Chronicles: Book 2 (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series) (p. 537). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition.
”
”
A. Kirk
“
At the top of the Queen’s Staircase at the Tuileries, there is a series of communicating chambers, crowded every day with clerks, secretaries, messengers, with army officers and purveyors, officials of the Commune and officers of the courts: with government couriers, booted and spurred, waiting for dispatches from the last room in the suite. Look down: outside there are cannon and files of soldiers. The room at the end was once the private office of Louis the Last. You cannot go in.
That room is now the office of the Committee of Public Safety. The Committee exists to supervise the Council of Ministers and to expedite its decisions.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (A Place of Greater Safety)
“
She sometimes takes her little brother for a walk round this way," explained Bingo. "I thought we would meet her and bow, and you could see her, you know, and then we would walk on."
"Of course," I said, "that's enough excitement for anyone, and undoubtedly a corking reward for tramping three miles out of one's way over ploughed fields with tight boots, but don't we do anything else? Don't we tack on to the girl and buzz along with her?"
"Good Lord!" said Bingo, honestly amazed. "You don't suppose I've got nerve enough for that, do you? I just look at her from afar off and all that sort of thing. Quick! Here she comes! No, I'm wrong!"
It was like that song of Harry Lauder's where he's waiting for the girl and says, "This is her-r-r. No, it's a rabbut." Young Bingo made me stand there in the teeth of a nor'-east half-gale for ten minutes, keeping me on my toes with a series of false alarms, and I was just thinking of suggesting that we should lay off and give the rest of the proceedings a miss, when round the corner there came a fox-terrier, and Bingo quivered like an aspen. Then there hove in sight a small boy, and he shook like a jelly. Finally, like a star whose entrance has been worked up by the personnel of the ensemble, a girl appeared, and his emotion was painful to witness. His face got so red that, what with his white collar and the fact that the wind had turned his nose blue, he looked more like a French flag than anything else. He sagged from the waist upwards, as if he had been filleted.
He was just raising his fingers limply to his cap when he suddenly saw that the girl wasn't alone. A chappie in clerical costume was also among those present, and the sight of him didn't seem to do Bingo a bit of good. His face got redder and his nose bluer, and it wasn't till they had nearly passed that he managed to get hold of his cap.
The girl bowed, the curate said, "Ah, Little. Rough weather," the dog barked, and then they toddled on and the entertainment was over.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse
“
CONDENSATION COVERS THE walls, dimpling into tiny individual drops that follow an almost fractal pattern, like someone has been writing out the secrets of the universe in the most transitory medium they can find. The smell of damp steel assaults my nose as I walk the hall, uncomfortable boots clumping heavily with every step I force myself to take. The space is tight, confined, unyielding; it is like living inside a coral reef, trapped by the limits of our own necessary shells. We are constantly envious of those who escape its limitations, and we fear for them at the same time, wishing them safe return to the reef, where they can be kept away from all the darkness and predations of the open sea.
”
”
Joe Hill (The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (The Best American Series))
“
From the days of the Assyrians and the Qin, great empires were usually built through violent conquest. In 1914 too, all the major powers owed their status to successful wars. For instance, Imperial Japan became a regional power thanks to its victories over China and Russia; Germany became Europe’s top dog after its triumphs over Austria-Hungary and France; and Britain created the world’s largest and most prosperous empire through a series of splendid little wars all over the planet. Thus in 1882 Britain invaded and occupied Egypt, losing a mere fifty-seven soldiers in the decisive Battle of Tel el-Kebir. Whereas in our days occupying a Muslim country is the stuff of Western nightmares, following Tel el-Kebir the British faced little armed resistance, and for more than six decades controlled the Nile Valley and the vital Suez Canal. Other European powers emulated the British, and whenever governments in Paris, Rome or Brussels contemplated putting boots on the ground in Vietnam, Libya or Congo, their only fear was that somebody else might get there first.
Even the United States owed its great-power status to military action rather than economic enterprise alone. In 1846 it invaded Mexico, and conquered California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming and Oklahoma. The peace treaty also confirmed the previous US annexation of Texas. About 13,000 American soldiers died in the war, which added 2.3 million square kilometres to the “United States (more than the combined size of France, Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy). It was the bargain of the millennium.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
Stuff doesn't matter. That's what they say. I wonder if they've tried losing everything? I left Kerenza with nothing but the clothes I was wearing, and I lost those soon after. I got a ship jumpsuit instead. They say people are more important than stuff. Maybe that's true, though I think there's a reason nobody but Brothers and Sisters renounce their possessions. Even the destitute have something to cling to, right? Your stuff is a series of choices that show who you are. Yeah, I went for the black digiplayer with the skulls on, got a problem with that? Yeah, these are the boots my mom says make me look like I'm in the army. This is the shirt my boyfriend loves, that I have to wear a jacket over when I leave the house. That's the toy turtle my grandma gave me before she died.
All I have now is me. People matter more than stuff?
Well *beep* you, I don't have people. My mother's dead or mad. My father's on Heimdall, which means he's probably dead too. And my stuff might have been a tiny reminder, something to cling to. Something to tell me who I am.
Excuse me for being so ----ing shallow. I want to slam this keyboard against the wall. This keyboard that belongs to the Hypatia. Not mine. Requisitioned. Like my blanket. Like my clothes. Like my life.
So here's the thing. My people are gone. My stuff is gone. Nobody's left who knows me, there's nothing left to say who I am. Everyhing's gone, except one thing. One person. He told me to run, to get out, to spread the word. Byron said the same. I understand why they did. But Ezra was ready to die just to improve my chance of survival one percent more.
Turns out I feel the same way.
Time to go get him. Or die trying.
- Kady; The Illuminae Files
”
”
Jay Kristoff (Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1))
“
You have to have approached a place from all four cardinal points if you want to take it in, and what’s more, you also have to have left it from all these points. Otherwise it will quite unexpectedly cross your path three or four times before you are prepared to discover it. One stage further, and you seek it out, you orient your-self by it. The same thing with houses. It is only after having crept along a series of them in search of a very specific one that you come to learn what they contain. From the arches of gates, on the frames of house doors, in letters of varying size, black, blue, yellow, red, in the shape of arrows or in the image of boots or freshly-ironed laundry or a word stoop or a stairway’s solid landing, the life leaps out at you, combative, determined, mute. You have to have traveled the streets by streetcar to realize how this running battle con-tinues up along the various stories and finally reaches its decisive pitch on the roofs.
”
”
Walter Benjamin (Moscow Diary)
“
Honest to God, I hadn’t meant to start a bar fight.
“So. You’re the famous Jordan Amador.” The demon sitting in front of me looked like someone filled a pig bladder with rotten cottage cheese. He overflowed the bar stool with his gelatinous stomach, just barely contained by a white dress shirt and an oversized leather jacket. Acid-washed jeans clung to his stumpy legs and his boots were at least twice the size of mine. His beady black eyes started at my ankles and dragged upward, past my dark jeans, across my black turtleneck sweater, and over the grey duster around me that was two sizes too big.
He finally met my gaze and snorted before continuing. “I was expecting something different. Certainly not a black girl. What’s with the name, girlie?”
I shrugged. “My mother was a religious woman.”
“Clearly,” the demon said, tucking a fat cigar in one corner of his mouth. He stood up and walked over to the pool table beside him where he and five of his lackeys had gathered. Each of them was over six feet tall and were all muscle where he was all fat.
“I could start to examine the literary significance of your name, or I could ask what the hell you’re doing in my bar,” he said after knocking one of the balls into the left corner pocket.
“Just here to ask a question, that’s all. I don’t want trouble.”
Again, he snorted, but this time smoke shot from his nostrils, which made him look like an albino dragon. “My ass you don’t. This place is for fallen angels only, sweetheart. And we know your reputation.”
I held up my hands in supplication. “Honest Abe. Just one question and I’m out of your hair forever.”
My gaze lifted to the bald spot at the top of his head surrounded by peroxide blonde locks. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
He glared at me. I smiled, batting my eyelashes. He tapped his fingers against the pool cue and then shrugged one shoulder.
“Fine. What’s your question?”
“Know anybody by the name of Matthias Gruber?”
He didn’t even blink. “No.”
“Ah. I see. Sorry to have wasted your time.”
I turned around, walking back through the bar. I kept a quick, confident stride as I went, ignoring the whispers of the fallen angels in my wake. A couple called out to me, asking if I’d let them have a taste, but I didn’t spare them a glance. Instead, I headed to the ladies’ room. Thankfully, it was empty, so I whipped out my phone and dialed the first number in my Recent Call list.
“Hey. He’s here. Yeah, I’m sure it’s him. They’re lousy liars when they’re drunk. Uh-huh. Okay, see you in five.”
I hung up and let out a slow breath. Only a couple things left to do.
I gathered my shoulder-length black hair into a high ponytail. I looped the loose curls around into a messy bun and made sure they wouldn’t tumble free if I shook my head too hard. I took the leather gloves in the pocket of my duster out and pulled them on. Then, I walked out of the bathroom and back to the front entrance.
The coat-check girl gave me a second unfriendly look as I returned with my ticket stub to retrieve my things—three vials of holy water, a black rosary with the beads made of onyx and the cross made of wood, a Smith & Wesson .9mm Glock complete with a full magazine of blessed bullets and a silencer, and a worn out page of the Bible.
I held out my hands for the items and she dropped them on the counter with an unapologetic, “Oops.”
“Thanks,” I said with a roll of my eyes. I put the Glock back in the hip holster at my side and tucked the rest of the items in the pockets of my duster.
The brunette demon crossed her arms under her hilariously oversized fake breasts and sent me a vicious sneer. “The door is that way, Seer. Don’t let it hit you on the way out.”
I smiled back. “God bless you.”
She let out an ugly hiss between her pearly white teeth. I blew her a kiss and walked out the door. The parking lot was packed outside now that it was half-past midnight. Demons thrived in darkness, so I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’d been counting on it.
”
”
Kyoko M. (The Holy Dark (The Black Parade, #3))
“
Extract from 'Quixotic Ambitions':
The crowd stared at Katy expectantly. She looked at them - old women in black, exhausted young women with pasty-faced children, youths in jeans and leather blousons chewing gum. She tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, she blurted out her short speech, thanking the people of Shkrapova for their welcome and promising that if she won the referendum she would work for the good of Maloslavia. There was some half-hearted applause and an old lady hobbled up to her, knelt down with difficulty, and kissed the hem of her skirt. She looked at Katy with tears rolling down her face and gabbled something excitedly. Dimitar translated: ‘She says that she remembers the reign of your grandfather and that God has sent you to Maloslavia.’ Katy was embarrassed but she smiled at the woman and helped her to her feet. At this moment the People’s Struggle Pioneers appeared on the scene, waving their banners and shouting ‘Doloy Manaheeyoo! Popnikov President!’ Police had been stationed at strategic points and quickly dispersed the demonstrators without any display of violence, but the angry cries of ‘Down with the monarchy!’ had a depressing effect on the entertainment that had been planned; only a few people remained to watch it.
A group of children aged between ten and twelve ran into the square and performed a series of dances accompanied by an accordian. They stamped their feet and clapped their hands frequently and occasionally collided with one another when they forgot their next move. The girls wore embroidered blouses, stiffly pleated skirts and scarlet boots and the boys were in baggy linen shirts and trousers, the legs of which were bound with leather thongs. Their enthusiasm compensated for their mistakes and they were loudly applauded. The male voice choir which followed consisted of twelve young men who sang complicated polyphonic melodies with a high, curiously nasal tenor line accompanied by an unusually deep droning bass. Some of their songs were the cries of despair of a people who had suffered under Turkish occupation; others were lively dance tunes for feast days and festivals. They were definitely an acquired taste and Katy, who was beginning to feel hungry, longed for them to come to an end.
At last, at two o’clock, the performance finished and trestle tables were set up in the square. Dishes of various salads, hors-d’oeuvres and oriental pastries appeared, along with casks of beer and bottles of the local red wine. The people who had disappeared during the brief demonstration came back and started piling food on to paper plates. A few of the People’s Struggle Pioneers also showed up again and mingled with the crowd, greedily eating anything that took their fancy.
”
”
Pamela Lake (Quixotic Ambitions)
“
I brought her food, but it stayed untouched on the plate no matter how I tried to cajole her into eating. When I caught her taking twenty minutes to eat a single almond, I began wondering if there was some kind of Watsonian guide for the care and keeping of Holmeses.
When I sent my father an email to that effect (subject line I Need Your Help, postscript Still haven't forgiven you and won't). he responded that, yes, over the years he'd written down an informal series of suggestions in his journal; he'd do his best to adapt and type them up for me.
When the list arrived the next day, it was twelve pages long, single-spaced.
The suggestions ran from the obvious (8.
On the whole, coaxing works rather better than straightforward demands) to the irrelevant (39. Under all circumstances, do not allow Holmes to cook your dinner unless you have a taste for cold unseasoned broth) to the absurd (87. Hide all firearms before throwing Holes a surprise birthday party) to, finally, the useful (1. Search often for opiates and dispose of as needed; retaliation will not come often, though is swift and exacting when it does - do not grow attached to one's mirrors or drinking glasses; 2. During your search, always begin with the hollowed-out heels of Holmes's boots; 102. Have no compunctions about drugging Holmes's tea if he hasn't slept; 41. Be prepared to receive compliments once every two to three years;
74.) (underlined twice) (Whatever happens, remember it is not your fault and likely could not have been prevented, no matter your efforts).
”
”
Brittany Cavallaro (A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1))
“
You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
”
”
Rosemarie Urquico
“
We need to be humble enough to recognize that unforeseen things can and do happen that are nobody’s fault. A good example of this occurred during the making of Toy Story 2. Earlier, when I described the evolution of that movie, I explained that our decision to overhaul the film so late in the game led to a meltdown of our workforce. This meltdown was the big unexpected event, and our response to it became part of our mythology. But about ten months before the reboot was ordered, in the winter of 1998, we’d been hit with a series of three smaller, random events—the first of which would threaten the future of Pixar. To understand this first event, you need to know that we rely on Unix and Linux machines to store the thousands of computer files that comprise all the shots of any given film. And on those machines, there is a command—/bin/rm -r -f *—that removes everything on the file system as fast as it can. Hearing that, you can probably anticipate what’s coming: Somehow, by accident, someone used this command on the drives where the Toy Story 2 files were kept. Not just some of the files, either. All of the data that made up the pictures, from objects to backgrounds, from lighting to shading, was dumped out of the system. First, Woody’s hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely. One by one, the other characters began to vanish, too: Buzz, Mr. Potato Head, Hamm, Rex. Whole sequences—poof!—were deleted from the drive. Oren Jacobs, one of the lead technical directors on the movie, remembers watching this occur in real time. At first, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then, he was frantically dialing the phone to reach systems. “Pull out the plug on the Toy Story 2 master machine!” he screamed. When the guy on the other end asked, sensibly, why, Oren screamed louder: “Please, God, just pull it out as fast as you can!” The systems guy moved quickly, but still, two years of work—90 percent of the film—had been erased in a matter of seconds. An hour later, Oren and his boss, Galyn Susman, were in my office, trying to figure out what we would do next. “Don’t worry,” we all reassured each other. “We’ll restore the data from the backup system tonight. We’ll only lose half a day of work.” But then came random event number two: The backup system, we discovered, hadn’t been working correctly. The mechanism we had in place specifically to help us recover from data failures had itself failed. Toy Story 2 was gone and, at this point, the urge to panic was quite real. To reassemble the film would have taken thirty people a solid year. I remember the meeting when, as this devastating reality began to sink in, the company’s leaders gathered in a conference room to discuss our options—of which there seemed to be none. Then, about an hour into our discussion, Galyn Susman, the movie’s supervising technical director, remembered something: “Wait,” she said. “I might have a backup on my home computer.” About six months before, Galyn had had her second baby, which required that she spend more of her time working from home. To make that process more convenient, she’d set up a system that copied the entire film database to her home computer, automatically, once a week. This—our third random event—would be our salvation. Within a minute of her epiphany, Galyn and Oren were in her Volvo, speeding to her home in San Anselmo. They got her computer, wrapped it in blankets, and placed it carefully in the backseat. Then they drove in the slow lane all the way back to the office, where the machine was, as Oren describes it, “carried into Pixar like an Egyptian pharaoh.” Thanks to Galyn’s files, Woody was back—along with the rest of the movie.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
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France’s national image was the product of a collaboration between a king with a vision and some of the most brilliant artists, artisans, and craftspeople of all time—men and women who were the founding geniuses in domains as disparate as wine making, fashion accessorizing, jewelry design, cabinetry, codification of culinary technique, and hairstyling. There was a second collaboration: between Louis XIV and a series of brilliant inventors, the creators of everything from a revolutionary technology for glassmaking to a visionary pair of boots. Each of these areas seems modest enough in and of itself. All together, however, they added up to an amazingly powerful new entity. Thanks to Louis XIV, France had acquired a reputation as the country that had written the book on elegant living.
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Joan DeJean (The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour)
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I led the men inside and though I was allowed to pass unscathed, both Sir Fhirell and Drudvis received a thorough scolding for stepping past the threshold in their boots. Both men obediently removed their footwear before going to wash up for the meal. I wasn’t sure why, but it warmed me to see this average-sized woman barking out orders to a giant and a Knight, only to have them both do as they were told without argument.
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Julie B. Campbell (Third Time's a Charmer (Perspective #3))
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Well, why don’t you try climbing up the neck and see how you get on?” said Spidroth. “Ooo, good idea,” said Alex. Alex ran and jumped towards the neck of the yellow creeper queen, intending to run up the side of it like a ninja, but as soon as her boots touched the yellow skin, she was blasted with electricity and went flying backward, rolling across the sand. “Fool,” said Spidroth, looking down at Alex with a nasty grin. “But you were the one who told me to do it,” said Alex, rubbing her head. “I said nothing of the sort,” said Spidroth. “You must be hearing things.
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Dave Villager (Dave the Villager 32: An Unofficial Minecraft Series (The Legend of Dave the Villager))
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turned around and blocked that blow. Then he sensed another blow coming from behind, so he moved his sword around and blocked that blow without even looking. This is amazing, Dave thought. It was like there was a hand guiding his movements. But then things began to go wrong: an illager charged at Dave from the front but at the same time Dave had a vision of the same illager attacking him from the side. In his confusion, Dave was unable to block the blow. And the illager smashed his sword down on Dave’s helmet, making Dave’s ears ring. I’m getting what’s happening now mixed up with what’s about to happen, Dave knew. Then he remembered the joke that Carl had made before — “You should tie some cloth around your eyes when you fight.” Against his better judgment, Dave closed his eyes. Now, the only thing guiding him was the Sight, not what he could see with his own eyes. I hope this works, Dave thought. Letting the Sight guide him, Dave raised his sword and blocked a sword blow. Then he turned around and blocked another blow. “This moron is fighting with his eyes closed,” Dave heard one of the illagers say. “Kill him!” Keeping his eyes closed and letting the Sight guide him, Dave swooped his sword down in an arc, blocking another sword blow. Then he brought his sword quickly up, chopping one of the illager’s diamond swords in half. Then he turned and kicked one of the illagers in the chest with his netherite boot, sending the illager tumbling backward into a wall. Before long, Dave had defeated all the illagers: chopping their diamond swords in half and making them useless. He opened his eyes and saw all the illagers looking at him in terror.
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Dave Villager (Dave the Villager 32: An Unofficial Minecraft Series (The Legend of Dave the Villager))
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Maybe we need to get up to the head,” said Alex, rushing over to join Spidroth. “Well, why don’t you try climbing up the neck and see how you get on?” said Spidroth. “Ooo, good idea,” said Alex. Alex ran and jumped towards the neck of the yellow creeper queen, intending to run up the side of it like a ninja, but as soon as her boots touched the yellow skin, she was blasted with electricity and went flying backward, rolling across the sand. “Fool,” said Spidroth, looking down at Alex with a nasty grin. “But you were the one who told me to do it,” said Alex, rubbing her head. “I said nothing of the sort,” said Spidroth. “You must be hearing things.
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Dave Villager (Dave the Villager 32: An Unofficial Minecraft Series (The Legend of Dave the Villager))
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What is a good tool for monitoring multiple services at a time? Graphite is an open source database that captures metrics from services in a time series database. By using Graphite we can capture essential metrics of multiple Microservices simultaneously. And we can use a dashboard like- Grafana to monitor these metrics in almost real time. Graphite is also great at handling large amount of data. It can also show the trends from few hours to few months within a few seconds. Many organizations like- Facebook etc. use Graphite for monitoring. Some of the other tools to monitor Microservices are: AppDynamics, DynaTrace, SpringBoot Admin etc.
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Knowledge Powerhouse (Top 50 Microservices Interview Questions & Answers: Good Collection of Questions Faced in Architect Level Technical Interviews (updated 2020 version))
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Y-you’re dead,” said Dave, backing away from the illager. Mad Mulligan looked exactly as Dave had last seen him: a tall gray-skinned illager, wearing a black leather jacket, a red scarf around his neck tucked into the jacket, gray jeans and heavy-looking black boots. As ever, he was grinning. “I’m afraid your information is out of date, Dave,” said Mad Mulligan. “I’m very much alive. Alive and kicking.
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Dave Villager (Dave the Villager 39: An Unofficial Minecraft Series (The Legend of Dave the Villager))
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As he stepped out onto the shoulder, the weeds snapped and crunched under his old leather work boot, flushing out some grasshoppers that scattered like popping popcorn. Their cracking wings and the burbling Chautauqua River below on the opposite side of the road were the only sounds. It
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Jeff Carson (The David Wolf Mystery Thriller Series: Books 5-7)
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What I Believe and what I can prove, those are two different pairs of boots
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Colombo
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Petipa responds with vigor equal to Ralph's robust song and flamboyant gestures. Once the energy level is raised, Ralph feels that his postures become imbued with an unconscious spiritual significance which Petipa affirms by countering with her own complementary moves. A hopping arabesque from Ralph may provoke a series of elegant stalking leaps from Petipa, while a fluttering of fingers may be countered with tiny aerial flurries. Poignant moments of unconcerned fur licking punctuate the patterns of the dance.
Dancing with a tail of his own attached, Fred becomes a psychic extension of the cat. 'I share its grace, power, and oneness with the universe. I relate to Fluff and the whole spectrum of feline physicality on a profound level--I even regard birds differently.'
Cat dancing is likely a complex vocabulary of gestures that we have yet to recognize and fully understand. Helen, along with others who share her covenant, has come to feel that Boot's studied poses communicate his inner thoughts and embody his souls unexpressed desires.
But you have to be careful; sometimes the energy is so powerful I worry about overstimulating my aura. At those levels, an unstable etheric oscillation could collapse into an astral vortex and suck my spiritual reserves into a sate of negative sub-matter.
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Burton Silver (Dancing with Cats)
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Up, fed, and dressed in my usual black leather jacket, skinny jeans and leather boots, I’m out the door by 7:30a.m. Yes, I’m aware it’s summertime, but it’s my Batman suit.
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S.L. Gandy (Peeling Back The Layers (The Rya Jones Series Book 1))
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They took turns stepping over a pile of cracked leather purses to get to the women’s department. Kate wrinkled her nose at the donated shoes—sandals, flats, boots—all in dull shades. She preferred her shoes new, of course, and always with at least a two-inch heel to compensate for her height. Joely sorted through a long row of tops. Her face brightened when she discovered a floral-patterned blouse. “These colors remind me of the lilacs I’m painting for my new client. She’s a heart surgeon and appears to have everything—an amazing career, a house decorated with antique furniture, a Jaguar in the garage. . . .” She held the material
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Karen Lenfestey (A Sister's Promise (Sisters Series, #1))
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The answer's no, now get your shit together. Andy and Taffy, go and grab a couple of those blankets, we'll be in need of them later,' Williams said, jumping down from the table, his boots clicking loudly on the tile floor. 'Back to the fucking war, the general's spoken,' Ed muttered. 'I heard that you scrawny fuck, now shake yourself out and let's get moving.
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Stuart Minor (The Complete Western Front Series by Stuart Minor)
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The German swung an entrenching tool at Ham, the big soldier ducking from the blow, before thrusting up with his bayonet, the blade digging into the German’s thigh and sending him crashing into the ditch, his arms reaching up, before Ham crashed his boot down on his head.
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Stuart Minor (The Devil's Bridge (The Second World War Series, #8))
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Jesus,’ Stan groaned, as Fred swung his boot at his arse, making him jump forward. Jack broke into a tired run as the men jostled forward, the soldiers chased by Fred’s voice as he yelled incessantly after them.
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Stuart Minor (The Sixth Day in June (The Second World War Series, #9))
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She stepped to her clothing trunks, the grand traveling trunks that she had packed so hopefully in the days before she left Bingtown. They had been stuffed when she began her journey, full of sensible clothes fit for a lady adventurer. Stoutly woven cotton blouses with a minimum of lace, split skirts for hiking, hats with veils to ward off insects and sun, sturdy leather boots…little but memories remained of them now. The hardships of travel had softened the fabrics. Her boots scuffed and leaked, the ties now a series of knots. Laundering clothes in the acidic waters of the river had been her only choice, but seams had weakened and hems had frayed. She drew on a set of her worn clothes with no thought as to what they would look like. No one was going to look at her anyway. She was finished forever with worrying about what she looked like or what people thought of her.
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Robin Hobb (Blood of Dragons (Rain Wild Chronicles, #4))
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We’re in Key West Bight,” Gina replied. “We’re also here looking for someone else.” “Who?” Carly asked, as Amber turned and strutted toward them as if she were on a fashion runway. Her attitude reminded him of Cathy, a girl he’d gone out with several times when he’d returned home from boot camp. “Being aware of how you look to others,” Mam had often told him, “and striving to show others how you look, are two different things. One is neatness, and the other, vanity.
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Wayne Stinnett (Bad Blood: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Tropical Adventure Series Book 2))
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The sergeant grabbed hold of the man’s braces before sawing the wickedly sharp blade through the elastic, causing the German’s trousers to fall around his boots. ‘They’re less likely to jump their guards if they are trying to hold onto their trousers,’ Fred explained, as he moved amongst the prisoners and repeated the process. ‘Oh, I see,’ the officer said, his eyes blinking behind his glasses as he stared at the party of Germans who were stood clutching their breeches.
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Stuart Minor (Storm of War (The Second World War Series Book 15))
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Not much further,’ Fred bellowed, as the men began to slow, their mouths cursing as their legs sank into the soft soil. ‘I’ve lost my boot,’ Reg shouted, the boat swaying as he hopped forward on one foot. ‘Fuck your boot, keep moving,’ Fred grunted.
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Stuart Minor (Market Garden (The Second World War Series Book 14))
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loneliness every day, day in and day out. Eventually, I come to thick snow and need to put on my snow boots so I can drudge through these rough patches. Never, have I felt this avalanche of snowfall on my head as I have tonight. I truly have no one. I am truly am alone.
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April Raynne (Captured Love (The Captured Series Book 2))
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....I would have rather taken a kick square in the dick with steel toe boots that had razor blades attached to them." ---- Matt Layne, RELEASED: Cellar Door Series #2
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K. Pars
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agency, where she’d filled seemingly endless paperwork despite all the forms she’d already filled out online, and was now in proud possession of the keys to a Honda Civic. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the sky outside was as gray as pewter, with mean little flakes of snow, not the fluffy, festive kind, drifting down on a muted grey landscape of concrete and leafless trees. Claire dumped her bag in the trunk—or the boot, she supposed, someone in England would call it. Claire had always loved her godmother Ruth’s English accent, and when she was a kid she’d quizzed Ruth on all the different British words. Pavement for sidewalk. Jumper for sweater. Rubber for eraser. The last one, of course, had caused eleven-year-old Claire to burst into muffled giggles of embarrassment and mirth. Ruth had just smiled, her eyes twinkling, sharing the admittedly immature joke. Slowly, very conscious she was driving on the other side of the road, Claire pulled onto the road, and then followed signs for the M62 and York. An hour and a half later, those mean little flakes of snow had turned thick and fluffy and white. They were beautiful, but her little car was not handling the snowy roads all that
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Kate Hewitt (A Yorkshire Christmas (Christmas Around the World Series, #2))
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Rome: Did You Know This?
Rome is often called the Eternal City. The spirits of ancient civilizations live on in monuments and ruins that are located throughout the city. Yet Rome today is also a vibrant, modern city. Once the capital of a huge empire, Rome has been the capital of Italy since 1871.
Rome is located in the central part of the Italian boot along the Tiber River. The city was once defined by the Seven Hills of Rome. Today, these hills are in the center of a sprawling city, which is home to more than 2.5 million people. Palatine Hill is rich in ancient ruins and medieval mansions. Another of the Seven Hills, Capitoline, was the site of the Roman government in ancient times, as it is today. Michelangelo designed many structures on the Capitoline. In a valley among the Seven Hills lies the Forum, the center of ancient Rome, an area surrounded by temples and palaces.
Rome also thrived during the Renaissance, when cities all over Italy competed to have the greatest art and architecture. Many of the city’s great churches and fountains were built during the Renaissance.
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Jean Blashfield Black (Italy (Enchantment of the World Second Series))
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Climate
Italy’s climate varies greatly from north to south. In the Alps, at the top of the boot, snow lingers on the highest peaks throughout the summer.
The foot of the boot has hot, dry summers and mild winters. In summer, the temperature can easily reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) or higher. This climate draws many northerners to the Mediterranean beaches in the winter.
Rome, Italy’s capital, is in the middle of the boot. It’s average high temperature in January is about 52°F (11°C), and its average high temperature in July is 86°F (30°C). In 2003, Italy suffered a heat wave in which the temperature reached 100°F (38°C) or more throughout the summer. An estimated three thousand people, mostly elderly, died.
Rain is the heaviest during the fall and winter months. The rainiest areas are in the north. The city of Udine, in the northeast, receives about 60 inches (150 centimeters) of rain a year, but only about 18 inches (46cm) fall on southern Sicily each year.
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Jean Blashfield Black (Italy (Enchantment of the World Second Series))
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The Coming of the Greeks
The southern part of the Italian boot is close to Greece, and several Greek cultures influenced he cultures of Italy. People from the Greek city of Corinth settled on Sicily. Starting about 734 B.C., they built a city called Syracuse on the island’s east coast. The Greeks ruled this city, and the Sicilians were enslaved.
The Greeks established other cities on the mainland, in a cluster known as Magna Graecia, which means “Great Greece” in Latin, the language of ancient Rome. A later Greek city, called Poseidonia after Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, flourished in about 550 B.C. When Italic people conquered the city, which was located south of Naples, they changed its name to Paestum. The ruins of Greek temples there are among the best-preserved Greek structures anywhere.
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Jean Blashfield Black (Italy (Enchantment of the World Second Series))
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Speaking Italian
Italian is a Romance language, meaning that it is based on Latin, the language of ancient Rome. Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Romanian are also Romance languages. Many people who speak only Spanish can understand and be understood by Italians.
The Italian spoken today originated with Tuscan Italian, a mixture of dialects, or varieties, from the region of Tuscany. In the 1300s, Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy in Tuscan Italian. The leading writers of the Renaissance also used Tuscan Italian.
Although Italian is the nation’s main language, several Italian dialects are spoken. These include Friulian, which is spoken by about six hundred thousand people in the northeast of the country, and Sicilian. People in Calabria, the boot’s foot, use a dialect that includes a lot of Greek words. These came to the region more than two thousand years ago, when the Greeks colonized the region.
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Jean Blashfield Black (Italy (Enchantment of the World Second Series))
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a Cell match for the main event at the pay-per-view. Later in the week on Smackdown, on the Miz TV segment between Ambrose and Cena, the match was revealed to be a No Holds Barred Contract On A Pole Match. On the October 13 episode of Raw, Ambrose and Cena had their match that night instead in which Ambrose won and will face Seth Rollins in a Hell in a Cell match at the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view. At Hell in a Cell, Ambrose lost to Rollins after Bray Wyatt attacked Ambrose at the end of the main event match. The next few weeks saw Ambrose and Wyatt taunting and attacking each other in both backstage and in-ring segments, with Wyatt claiming that he could "fix" Ambrose, leading to a match at Survivor Series. Ambrose lost the match by disqualification after hitting Wyatt with a steel chair and then hit Wyatt through a table in which Wyatt would be buried under tables and chairs as Ambrose stood on a ladder. This would then soon after announce another match between the two in a tables, ladders and chairs match on the TLC pay-perview next month. During the match, a television monitor blew up in Ambrose's face, allowing Wyatt to win the match. Ambrose managed to beat Wyatt in a Boot Camp match yet again was defeated by Wyatt in a "Miracle on 34th Street Fight". The feud concluded when Wyatt beat Ambrose in the first Ambulance match held on Raw. At the Royal Rumble, Ambrose participated in the Royal Rumble match, but was eliminated by Kane and Big Show. On the January 19 episode of Raw, Ambrose defeated Intercontinental Champion Bad News Barrett. The following weeks, Ambrose demanded a match for Barrett's title, but Barrett declined, leading to Ambrose attacking him, tying his hands around the ring post, and forcing him to sign a contract
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Marlow Martin (Dean Ambrose)
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Of course, she was from Alaska and hiking was something where your parents laced boots on your feet in toddlerhood and chucked your chubby ass out the door with the directive: walk.
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Tamara Rose Blodgett (The Blood Series (Blood, #1-3))
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Third places remain upbeat because of the limited way in which the participants are related. Most of the regulars in a third place have a unique and special status with regard to one another. It is special in that such people have neither the blandness of strangers nor that other kind of blandness, which takes zest out of relationships between even the most favorably matched people when too much time is spent together, when too much is known, too many problems are shared, and too much is taken for granted. Many among the regulars of a third place are like Emerson's "commended stranger" who represents humanity anew, who offers a new mirror in which to view ourselves, and who thus breathes life into our conversation. In the presence of the commended stranger, wrote Emerson, "We talk better than we are wont. We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, our dumb devil has taken leave for a time. For long hours, we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that those who sit by, of our kinsfolk, and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual power.:
The magic of commended strangers fades as one comes to know them better. They are fallible. They have problems and weaknesses like everyone else and, as their luster fades, so does their ability to inspire our wit, memory, and imagination. The third place, however, retards that fading process, and it does so by keeping the lives of most of its regulars disentangled. One individual may enjoy the company of others at a mutual haunt for years without ever having seen their spouses; never having visited their homes or the places where they work; never having seen them against the duller backdrop of their existence on the "outside." Many a third place regular represents conversationally and socially what the mistress represents sexually. Much of the lure and continuing allure of the mistress rests in the fact that only pleasure is involved. There is no rising from bed to face the myriad problems that husband and wife must share and that contaminates their lives and their regard for one another. Third places surely contain many of these "mistresses of conversation," people who meet one another only to share good times and scintillating activities and with whom good times and scintillation thus come to be associated. Out of tacit agreement not to share too much, the excitement attaching the commended stranger is preserved among third place regulars. What, after all, are such incidentals as home and family and job when the nature of life itself, the course of the world in modern times, or the booted ball that cost a victory in last night's game are on the agenda?
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Ray Oldenburg (The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community)
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Peter's stomach dropped into his boots and all thoughts of breakfast fled. How had the Assassin ended up here, and where had he amassed an army? It wasn't fair. Peter no longer had an army on his side, he didn't even have a crew of insane Air Pirates to help him out. How come Assassins had armies and he didn't?
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Jack Lewis Baillot (Haphazardly Implausible (Haphazardly Implausible, #1))
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Zaptoads can only be safely handled if you’re wearing rubber boots
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Sprogling (A to Z of Silly Animals (The Silly Animals Series))
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Canceled checks Along with your bank statement, you will most likely receive all the checks you wrote that were cashed during that month. You should keep these in case you ever have to prove to a supplier that you paid an invoice. The bank stamp on the back of the check carries information as to when and where the check was cashed.
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Angie Mohr (Bookkeepers' Boot Camp: Get a Grip on Accounting Basics (101 for Small Business Series))
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but after seeing her come home and track zombie brains all over her fuzzy carpet with her motorcycle boots (and getting really mad about it when she found out),
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J.B. O'Neil (Grandma vs. Zombies - Kicking Zombie Butt... "Old School Style" (The Family Avengers Series))
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scruff of the sheep’s neck, the dog by his heels. “Need a hand?” He stretched a hand out which Claire grabbed gratefully. She clambered up the ditch alongside him, until they were all standing, man, woman, dog, and sheep, at the edge of a snowy field without a house or building in sight. “Thank you,” he said, his voice gruff. “I couldn’t have got her out on my own.” He nodded towards her boots. “You’re soaked.
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Kate Hewitt (A Yorkshire Christmas (Christmas Around the World Series, #2))
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I marched along the familiar paths, hoping a fast stride would keep me warm. Part of me was enjoying the peaceful scenery while the other part pondered my newly altered circumstances. I never wallow in self-pity, for there is nothing to be gained by such indulgences, but I confess to feeling just a bit irritated.
“If only I’d had the good fortune to be a widow!” I muttered to myself crossly, kicking at a pebble in my path. Instead of a divorcée, that is to say. Quelle différence! My present circumstances would be much improved by my having lost my husband in some war, rather than by the shocking action of booting him from my life. It isn’t fair, but there we are.
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Wendy Coles-Littlepage (Disfigured (Disfigured Series #1))
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Goomba's Shoe was originally known as what? A. Goomboot B. Kuribo's Shoe C. Stomb Boot D. Big Shoe Answer
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Jacob Mann (The Super Mario Trivia Quiz Book: How Much Do You Know it All About the Hit Nintendo Video Game Series?)
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The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt modern civilization. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos in order that the earth should become their inheritance." - German chancellor Otto von Bismarck Unfortunately, the proponents of the Great Plan were just warming up for something much bigger…..the first truly World War. ************************************************************************************* (End of “Rise of the New World Order: The Culling of Man” section) ************************************************************************************* The same people who caused the first Civil War to happen are the EXACT same ones fomenting Civil War II.
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J. Micha-el Thomas Hays (Book Series Update and Urgent Status Report: Vol. 3 (Rise of the New World Order Status Report))
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Choose joy, Cade. First Corinthians sixteen-fourteen says, 'Let all that you do be done in love.' Let love in. It will heal all wounds.
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Casey Peeler (Tutus & Cowboy Boots Series: Books 1 & 2: A Small Town Dance Romance)
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As long as you have people around you that love you, nothing else in this world matters.
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Casey Peeler (Tutus & Cowboy Boots Series: Books 1 & 2: A Small Town Dance Romance)
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Then I had one of those odd shifts of focus and looked down at my bike, and my dusty, worn gloves on the handlebars. We were in the greatest place in the world, but what had it taken to get here? Quite a bit. Learning to ride, getting a driver’s license in high school. Acquiring tools, learning to change flat tires and clutch cables. Gaining dirt experience and going to dealerships to shop for the right bike. Installing knobbies and handguards and a skidplate. After years of youthful indigence, moving through a series of jobs that finally allowed you to afford a truck or a bike trailer. Learning to read maps and cross rivers in deep water. Finding helmets and enduro jackets and motocross boots that fit. Getting a passport, paying your bike registration, learning a smattering of useful Spanish.… And living long enough to have friends who were crazy enough to do all these things, as well. People you could count on who’d gone through the same lifetime of motorcycle connections that had brought us to this perfect spot in time. As I put my helmet back on, it occurred to me that you are never more completely the sum of everything you’ve ever been than when you take a slightly difficult motorcycle trip into a strange land. And make it back out again.
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Peter Egan (Leanings 3: On the Road and in the Garage with Cycle World's Peter Egan)
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for the rest of the night. Other than to refuel with holiday leftovers. “Would you still love me if I told you I didn’t know what tasted better, Christmas leftovers or you?” Jana cocked her eyebrow with a sexy smile on her face. Damn, she was beautiful. “No but I will be mad unless you do some very thorough research and come up with a satisfying answer…” I grinned. This Christmas was unlike any of the others Jana and I had spent together. This time we had two little boys, a bigger family and we’d faced our biggest threat yet and come out on top. “If it’s for the sake of research, consider me in babe.” And I spent the rest of the night doing science. Between the gorgeous legs of my beautiful wife. I was pretty sure in that moment, life for the Reckless Bastard’s couldn’t get any better. Merry friggin’ Christmas to us! * * * * If you think the Reckless Bastards are spicy bad boys, they’re nothing compared to the steam in my next series Reckless MC Opey, TX Chapter where Gunnar and Maisie move to Texas! There’s also a sneak peek on the next page. Don’t wait — grab your copy today! Copyright © 2019 KB Winters and BookBoyfriends Publishing Inc Published By: BookBoyfriends Publishing Inc Chapter One Gunnar “We’re gonna be cowboys!” Maisie had been singing that song since we got on the interstate and left Nevada and the only family we’d had in the world behind. For good. Cross was my oldest friend, and I’d miss him the most, even though I knew we’d never lose touch. I’d miss Jag too, even Golden Boy and Max. The prospects were cool, but I had no attachment to them. Though I gave him a lot of shit, I knew I’d even miss Stitch. A little. It didn’t matter that the last year had been filled with more shit than gold, or that I was leaving Vegas in the dust, we were all closer for the hell we’d been through. But still, I was leaving. Maisie and I’d been on the road for a couple of days. Traveling with a small child took a long damn time. Between bathroom breaks and snack times we’d be lucky to make it to Opey by the end of the month. Lucky for me, Maisie had her mind set on us becoming cowboys, complete with ten gallon hats, spurs and chaps, so she hadn’t shed one tear, yet. It wasn’t something I’d been hoping for but I was waiting patiently for reality to sink in and the uncontrollable sobs that had a way of breaking a grown man’s heart. “You’re not a boy,” I told her and smiled through the rear view mirror. “Hard to be a cowboy if you’re not even a boy.” Maisie grinned, a full row of bright white baby teeth shining back at me right along with sapphire blue eyes and hair so black it looked to be painted on with ink. “I’m gonna be a cowgirl then! A cowgirl!” She went on and on for what felt like forever, in only the way that a four year old could, about all the cool cowgirl stuff she’d have. “Boots and a pony too!” “A pony? You can’t even tie your shoes or clean up your toys and you want a pony?” She nodded in that exaggerated way little kids did. “I’ll learn,” she said with the certainty of a know it all teenager, a thought that terrified the hell out of me. “You’ll help me, Gunny!” Her words brought a smile to my face even though I hated that fucking nickname she’d picked up from a woman I refused to think about ever again. I’d help Maisie because that’s what family did. Hell, she was the reason I’d uprooted my entire fucking life and headed to the great unknown wilds of Texas. To give Maisie a normal life or as close to normal as I was capable of giving her. “I’ll always help you, Squirt.” “I know. Love you Gunny!” “Love you too, Cowgirl.” I winked in the mirror and her face lit up with happiness. It was the pure joy on her face, putting a bloom in her cheeks that convinced me this was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to move to Texas, and I didn’t want to live on a goddamn ranch, but that was my future. The property was already bought and paid for with my name
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K.B. Winters (Mayhem Madness (Reckless Bastards MC #1-7))
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Peppa. If you jump in muddy puddles, you must wear your boots.
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Kevin Crocker (Full Series Peppa Pig Story Funny Childrens Books: VOL 1 Full Story edition)
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Surely I can't be the first woman to try and hide from you?" She got out, grateful she'd worn her heavy boots, which always made her feel a bit like Lara Croft.
"Oh, is that what you were doing? You're so short, I just assumed you were normally eye-level with the steering wheel.
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Erin La Rosa (For Butter or Worse (The Hollywood Series #1))
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light the night before. Downriver, I found the footprints of our mystery guests, but they were from the kind of hiking boot that pretty much everyone wore. I didn’t find anything new around the dig, not that I really expected to come across anything else as blatant as the Weems Aerospace pen. But it was still incredible to be in the middle of a real dinosaur dig, surrounded by honest-to-goodness tyrannosaur bones. We had to strike camp early. Sage needed to help out around the ranch, Dash and Ethan had to get to their summer jobs, and Summer had lined up more investigating for us to do. Once again, I hadn’t agreed to this so much as been thrust into it. I had turned off my phone when I went to sleep, and when I turned it back on, I found a long text chain from Summer saying that she was heading to Snakes Alive in the morning to question Rick, and she was doing it with or without me. I also found a series of e-mails that I had been included on between Summer and Tommy Lopez. Summer had written to Tommy with an update about what had happened at the Barksdales’ and our lead to Rick at Snakes Alive. Tommy had responded that this was great work, but then said he was still going to be out of town on business at least another day, at which point Summer had suggested approaching Rick with me, posing as normal kids who wanted to buy a snake. To my surprise, Tommy had been supportive. He even thought there might be an advantage
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Stuart Gibbs (Tyrannosaurus Wrecks (FunJungle, #6))
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It’s preposterous, expecting a man to unburden himself to a woman,” Bennett Winchester slurred as the mantel clock chimed. Though it was midmorning the Bow Street Society’s parlour had neither daylight nor gaslight to soften the retired captain’s pointed profile. Bloodshot, brown eyes looked beyond the wall as he approached, turned, and retraced his route, each thump of his boot succeeded by the heavy thud of his peg-leg.
Miss Trent’s gaze tracked him during each pass of her armchair yet she remained seated. “Captain Winchester,” she began, “you weren’t obligated to come here and I wasn’t obligated to receive you, yet here we are. Putting aside my disinclination to beg your pardon for my gender, I instead ask you to observe your surroundings. You and I are the only ones here. Therefore, your choice is clear—either swallow your masculine pride and tell me why you’re here, or leave and put your trust in those at Bow Street Police Station.”
“Don’t speak such impertinence to me!” Captain Winchester barked, drawing Miss Trent to her feet.
She countered, “I shall speak whatever I want, Captain, when you are in my domain.” His lips repeatedly furled and unfurled against gritted teeth while calloused hands, which had previously rested within his greatcoat’s deep pockets, balled at his sides. Starting at his neck, his already pink face steadily flushed as if port had spilt under his skin.
He snarled, “How daare you, you uncouth wretch.”
“Continue as you are, Captain Winchester, and I will be calling upon the officers at Bow Street,” Miss Trent promised despite his stale-rum-drenched breath turning her stomach. Whether it was the tone of her voice, her fixed gaze, the words themselves, or a combination of all three which cooled Bennett Winchester’s rage was unclear. Regardless the result was the same. After some aggressive chewing of his anger, the captain plonked himself in the vacant armchair. The clerk wasn’t naïve enough to think it ended, however. Instead, she enabled additional calming time by fetching tea from the kitchen. Coffee would’ve been more sobering for him but, alas, she suspected such a blatant assumption wouldn’t have been welcomed by his volatile temper.
In due course Captain Winchester’s pallid complexion had returned and his hands had come to rest upon his thighs. She poured the amber liquid in silence and he accepted the cup without remark. “I must beg your pardon for my brutishness, Miss Trent,” he muttered against the steam rising from his cup.
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T.G. Campbell (The Case of The Winchester Wife (The Bow Street Society Casebook #2))
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Stuff doesn't matter. That's what they say. I wonder if they've tried losing everything? I left Kerenza with nothing but the clothes I was wearing, and I lost those soon after. I got a ship jumpsuit instead. They say people are more important than stuff. Maybe that's true, though I think there's a reason nobody but Brothers and Sisters renounce their possessions. Even the destitute have something to cling to, right? Your stuff is a series of choices that show who you are. Yeah, I went for the black digiplayer with the skulls on, got a problem with that? Yeah, these are the boots my mom says make me look like I'm in the army. This is the shirt my boyfriend loves, that I have to wear a jacket over when I leave the house. That's the toy turtle my grandma gave me before she died.
All I have now is me. People matter more than stuff?
Well *beep* you, I don't have people. My mother's dead or mad. My father's on Heimdall, which means he's probably dead too. And my stuff might have been a tiny reminder, something to cling to. Something to tell me who I am.
Excuse me for being so ----ing shallow. I want to slam this keyboard against the wall. This keyboard that belongs to the Hypatia. Not mine. Requisitioned. Like my blanket. Like my clothes. Like my life.
So here's the thing. My people are gone. My stuff is gone. Nobody's left who knows me, there's nothing left to say who I am. Everyhing's gone, except one thing. One person. He told me to run, to get out, to spread the word. Byron said the same. I understand why they did. But Ezra was ready to die just to improve my chance of survival one percent more.
Turns out I feel the same way.
Time to go get him. Or die trying.
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Jay Kristoff (The Illuminae Files, #1-3)
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W. E. B. Du Bois was right when he said it was preferable to stand tall in a mud puddle than lick boots in the parlor.
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Ryan Holiday (Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series))
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said she would drive me around looking for The Bobbsey Twins in the Mystery Cave. You know what else she said? She said, “If we find a store that carries the book, I will buy a copy for you, too.” “Oh, thank you!” I had cried. “That will be great because I only have enough money for one copy.” That afternoon, Mommy dressed Andrew in his snowsuit and boots and hat and mittens and scarf. Andrew could hardly move, but Mommy said, “It’s cold and it feels like snow. Everybody bundle up.” So we did. Then Mommy drove to the Book Nook. I ran right to the section where the series books are kept. There were The Bobbsey Twins. But no number 53. Boo. “Don’t worry,” said Mommy. “We can still try Peter Rabbit and the Book Barn. We can even look in the grocery store.” “Okay,” I said. But Peter Rabbit was out of number 53. So was the Book Barn. “That’s a popular book in the series,” said the saleslady at the Book Barn. She smiled at me. “I know,” I answered. “That’s why my friend and I want to read it so badly.” I felt very discouraged when we left the Book Barn. But Mommy said, “I’ve got an idea. Let’s skip the grocery store. Let’s drive to Washington Mall instead. There are two big book-stores at the mall.” “Really, Mommy? You’ll really drive all the way to the mall?” I cried. “Sure,” Mommy replied. “Why not? Besides, Andrew needs new shoes.
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Ann M. Martin (Karen's Wish (Baby-Sitters Little Sister: Super Special #1))
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Gortex commando boots. He didn’t like what he found. Rialto was stretched out on his bunk, sleeping off the punch
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John Cutter (The Complete Jack Sullivan Series: Books 1-11 (The Specialist #1-11))
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importance. Sometimes they sat amicably in the damp green hide-out and ate liquorice boot-laces or a fearsomely sticky hardbake which was sold in one of the back streets of Lulling and was
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Miss Read (Winter in Thrush Green (Thrush Green series Book 2))
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Oh yeah, and how do I know that? Because from where I stand, if you hadn’t stepped in, I think he might have.”
He laughed. “Damien doesn’t even know what he’s doing. He spiked your drink because he was nervous—why do you think he backed down so easily?”
“So that makes it all okay, does it?” I snapped. “Because he was too nervous to get laid for the first time the simple, safe way? That’s petty and sick...” Then something occurred to me. “But why me?”
Brett dropped his gaze to his tan suede hiking boots. He paused and tapped a toe against the linoleum.
“Brett?” I snapped, knowing he was keeping something from me.
“I may have suggested he talk to you,” he murmured.
“What? Oh for fuck’s sake!”
“Damien wouldn’t have hurt you, Colt.
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Shaye Evans (Rescued (The Salvaged Series Book 1))
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Beau Brummell was regarded as unbalanced in his passion for daily ablutions. His ritualistic morning toilet took upward of five hours, one hour spent inching himself into his skin-tight buckskin breeches, an hour with the hairdresser, and another two hours tying and "creasing down" a series of starched cravats until perfection was achieved. But first of all two hours were spent scrubbing himself with fetish zeal from head to toe in milk, water and eau de Cologne... Beau Brummel said he used only the froth of champagne to polish his Hessian boots. He had 365 snuff boxes, those suitable for summer wear being quite unthinkable in winter, and the fit of his gloves was achieved by entrusting their cut to two firms - one of the fingers, and the often for the thumbs. Sometimes, however, the tyranny of elegance became altogether insupportable. A mr. Boothby committed suicide and left a note saying he could no longer endure the ennui of buttoning and unbuttoning.
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Harriette Wilson
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The sound of jingling armor and the clomping of dozens of booted, running feet is never quite so ominous as when you know they're coming for you.
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Brian Keller (Journeyman Assassin (The Kinsman #2))
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Laurie Siler. The singer. The Rockstar. He looked older than his 21 years. I’d always thought he was good looking, in music videos and interviews. But he was so much more beautiful in person. He had a strong jaw beneath a wide mouth, kind green eyes, floppy brown hair, slicked back but still brushing his shoulders. He wore a white t-shirt and black skinny jeans over tan Chelsea boots. I looked back to his eyes and they were staring straight at me. I was struck. Breathless. He smirked. The cocky sonofabitch.
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Christine J Darcy
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He was her dream. Her fairytale prince in scuffed up cowboy boots. The only man she wanted for the rest of time.
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Kimberly Lewis (Luke (The McKades of Texas, #3))
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All we had were maps that said “unsurveyed.
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Karen Brewster (Boots, Bikes, and Bombers: Adventures of Alaska Conservationist Ginny Hill Wood (Oral history series))
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Then we started reading books, and would go out and pretend what we had read about, emulating some hero or heroine.
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Karen Brewster (Boots, Bikes, and Bombers: Adventures of Alaska Conservationist Ginny Hill Wood (Oral history series))
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She intended to only glance over when she heard Aran, but her attention was snared completely. His hair was wet and full of suds, pants on, boots barely on, a shirt clutched in his hands. It was the first time she’d seen him shirtless and, my-oh-my were all Fae built like that? Or was it being a tracker that gave him such excellent musculature? “Sevana.” Aran grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her once, gently. Blinking, she forced her eyes up and focused on his face. “Muscles.” “What?” he asked in confusion. Mentally, she kicked herself. What had just come out of her mouth?
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Honor Raconteur (The Canard Case (The Artifactor Series, #4))
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The fight ahead played across his mind but not as insistently as the rumbling of his stomach or the stone in his boot which kept disappearing only to ambush another part of his foot.
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Stuart Minor (The Complete Western Front Series by Stuart Minor)
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They are scary eyes, don’t get me wrong, but what frightens me, what infuriates me, is that there isn’t anything exceptionally clever going on behind them. A series of national ineptitudes and a parsimonious attitude toward crimes against women created a kind of secret tunnel through which a college dropout with severe emotional disturbances moved with impunity for the better part of the seventies. Law enforcement would rather we remember a dull man as brilliant than take a good hard look at the role they played in this absolute sideshow, and I am sick to death of watching them in their pressed shirts and cowboy boots, in their comfortable leather interview chairs, in hugely successful and critically acclaimed crime documentaries, talking about the intelligence and charm and wiliness of an ordinary misogynist.
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Jessica Knoll (Bright Young Women)
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He was a teacher. Not a soldier. Not a pilot. Not a medic. Not a politician. Not a chef. Not a parent. A teacher. And a damn good one to boot.
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C.E. Whitaker III (Clash Of The Celestials (The Rover Series Universe, #3))
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Albert Lasker’s biographer, “The Dixie Champ took one look at Choynski, who had hands like hams and was a real professional to boot, and promptly fled town on the same train that had brought Choynski in.” Lasker had invested most of his savings in this fight. He had promoted it, sold tickets, rented Harmony Hall. What to do? That’s when he remembered a black dockworker that people called Li’l Artha’ Johnson. Li’l Artha’ could fight.
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Gary Cartwright (Galveston: A History of the Island (Chisholm Trail Series Book 18))
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We’ve been at this for six hours,’ Sid shouted, his boot lashing out at a tin of Blanco. ‘Fuck it, that’s what I say,’ he said, his voice breaking with pent-up fury. 'I'd rather be on the bloody peg than stuck in here.' ‘How many tins of Blanco are there, Sid?’ Donald asked, his eyes peering over the top of his spectacles. ‘I don’t know,’ Sid said, his voice almost sobbing. ‘I just don’t know.
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Stuart Minor (El Alamein (The Second World War Series, #6))
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I read his rather prosaic-sounding name for the first time in that moment, but some years ago I vowed to stop using it. This is no symbolic abstinence on my part- his name has been said enough and ours forgotten, yada yada. I mean, sure, fine, that can be part of it, but who I want you to remember, every time I say The Defendant, not him but the twenty-two-year-old court reporter dressed for success in a pussy-bow blouse. She was the one who recorded him in the official transcripts not by his government name, like the licensed attorney on the case, but by the two most honest letter combinations her sensitive ear and flying fingers could produce: The Defendant.
What people forget, or rather what the media decided muddied the narrative, is that although The Defendant would go on to represent himself at is murder trial, he was never a lawyer. Any Joe off the stree can fly pro se, litigate their own case, without graduating from law school or passing the bar. But it made for a more salable story if he was portrayed as someone who did not have to kill to get his kicks, who had prospects in his romantic life and his career. To this day, I revere that scrubbed-face court reporter, younger than me by only a year, because she is one of the sacred few who did her job without so much as a sliver of an agenda. The truth of what happened lies in those transcripts, where he is The Defendant and he is full of bullshit.
On the Wanted poster I held in my hands that ding afternoon in Tina’s rental car, The Defendant peered back at me with black vacant eyes. They are scary eyes, don’t get me wrong, but what frightens me, what infuriates me, is that there isn’t anything exceptionally clever going on behind them. A series of national ineptitudes and a parsimonious attitude toward crimes against women created a kind of secret tunnel through which a college dropout with severe emotional disturbances moved with impunity for the better part of the seventies. Law enforcement would rather we remember a dull man as brilliant than take a good hard look at the role they played in this absolute sideshow, and I am sick to death of watching them in their pressed shirts, and cowboy boots, in their comfortable leather interview chairs, in hugely successful and critically acclaimed crime documentaries, talking about the intelligence and charm and wiliness of an ordinary misogynist. This story is not that. The story is not that.
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Jessica Knoll (Bright Young Women)
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The real Aoife Gallagher wore jeans stained with engine oil and boots with cracked soles… The real Aoife didn’t curl her hair. She didn’t let herself believe that someone like Aiden could want her. Not unless she looked like this.
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Angie Nel (Reckless hearts in Rosewood Hollow : Book 2 of the Rosewood Hollow Series. A spicy small-town romance with heart, heat, and healing.)
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She was owed nothing less than for him to make a cake of himself, to lick her boots, to bow like a debutante in the Queen’s salon. And he would do it all, if only they could again be set on a right path.
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Amy D'Orazio (An Offer of Marriage: A Pride and Prejudice Variation (The Engaged to Mr Darcy Series))
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Buy 1 Get 2 Free Physical Products Offer: (The Boot Factory Offer) One Pair of Boots: $200 Buy X Get Y Free Offer: Buy One Pair For $600, Get Two Pairs for Free End Result: They still buy three pairs of $200 boots for a total of $600 3 Versions: 18 Months Of Services AKA “3 Pairs Of Boots” Good: “Buy 12 Months Get 6 Months Free” - $1,800 Better: “Buy 9 Months Get 9 Months Free” - $1,800 Best: “Buy 6 Months Get 12 Months Free” - $1,800
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Alex Hormozi ($100M Money Models: How To Make Money)