Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

The parking lot is empty except for Rabbi Heschel's car, a red Volkswagen Beetle she calls Habbie, after the prophet Habakkuk, because, she says, the car, like the prophet, has been crying for years without anyone paying attention.

I am not supposed to, but I open the top drawer of his desk. There are pen refills, paper clips that have been extended and can no longer serve their function, lots of pennies, business cards, a menu for a Thai restaurant, a small ball made from rubber bands, a drawing of a spiderweb on a sticky, a magnifying lens, three plastic spoons, a napkin, dental floss, a cough drop that is stuck to the bottom, a dozen Pepto-Bismol tablets.

As we get closer, we see an assortment of plastic animals on the front lawn: a family of deer, two white swans (now grayish), a mother duck with six ducklings behind her (one tipped over), two rabbits kissing each other, a brown fox, a groundhog up on its hind legs, a flamingo that could have been pink at one time but is now a whitish color.

The Birds of Ecuador: Field Guide

This morning, I saw a hawk outside, memorized his features sitting on the telephone wire, and then banged on the window so I could see him in flight. He didn't move, just kept looking around. When I came out and stomped he flew away, and then I saw fresh blood where he had caught something and then lost it. I went to school, got out a guide book, and was so surprised to find this powerful sentence about the Bicolored Hawk in a bird book:

A sneaky and inconspicuous hawk; rarely seen although it can be very bold, indeed at times almost fearless of humans.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

The truth about my son is that despite his good nature, his intelligence, his extensive education, and his bulldozer energy, he is as blunt as a kick in the shins.

The valley, changing from hour to hour, battle-fronts of clouds forming along the bases of the mountains, charging, breaking, scattering in tatters and streamers wildly flying; tops of the mountains seen with ineffable colors on them at sunset and the nearer hills like changeable cut velvet.

The first of them [letters worth reading] comes eleven months, one novel, one miscarriage, some anxious cases of measles and whooping cough, and some miles of her hasty illegible scrawl after the one I have just quoted.

From the narrows the river poured white and broken into the mineral green of the pool, which smoothed it within fifty feet. At the bottom of the pool the water visibly bulged, walling against the rockslide, and twisted right to find a way through. (p. 403)

It was his capacity for feeling that she should have attended to: by failing to comprehend it, she probably contributed to his silence.

Gladness and guilt hit her like waves meeting at an angle on the beach.

Saving Grace by Lee Smith

A book about a girl-teen-woman growing up with a snake-handling, hell-raising preacher for a father. Definitely NOT recommended for young people, but it is well written.

I am and always have been contentous and ornery, full of fear and doubt in a family of believers.

I remember them shoveling dirt onto Mama's pine box, and how it turned into runny red mud in the rain, and Ruth Duty kneeling and getting all muccy ad they had to help her up.

Then I don't remember anything at all for a long time, until one day when I kind of came back to myself and found that I was sitting in Ruth and Carlton's kitchen, at their round oak table, eating homemade vegetable soup out of a blue bowl with a big spoon that said "U.S. Navy" on it. I was surprised to see that it was still summer, and that I was still alive. The soup was delicious.

"And do you know," she said, leaning forward in a kitchen chair, one hand on each kneww, "do you know, she was pregnant with that baby for ten months with no sign of labor, until the doctors gave up and done a Sicilian?"