here's a few sentences .....
.....from a few of the books I've been reading lately. Shields shook his head as if testing its connection to the rest of his body. It was the kind of neighbourhood where middle class meant floorboards in the houses. The puny plastic box crackled with static. He looked crooked, like a piece of fruit that had been sliced and then put back together with less than full precision. The sky was as cold and hard as a gun. Minutes after I hit the blacktop the gun proved to be loaded; it fired a blast of thunder and the water started coming down. Grandma was waiting for me as I stepped into the waiting room, with a sheaf of stapled booklets and two sharpened number two pencils. He shook his head and buried his face in a plate of steamed mussels. The green apple pie came. I noticed that the filling was indeed green, a bright, almost luminescent green. Someone in the kitchen was fooling around with food dyes. She faced me, nostrils flaring, eyes floating like black lilies in a salt...