"Acceptable Risk", by Robin Cook http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/0425151867 Tuesday, July 12, 1994 KIMBERLY STEWART glanced at her watch as she went through the turnstile and exited the MBTA subway at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was a few minutes before seven P.M. She knew she would be on time or only minutes late, but still she hurried. Pushing through the crowd milling about the news kiosk in the middle of the square, she half ran and half walked the short distance on Massachusetts Avenue before turning right on Holyoke Street. -------------------------------------------------------------- * turnstile (noun) a small gate that spins around and only lets one person at a time go through an entrance * MBTA : Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority * mill around/about (phrasal verb) if a lot of people are milling around, they move around a place without a particular purpose * kiosk (noun) a small building in the street where newspapers, sweets etc are sold
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Pausing to catch her breath in front of the Hasty Pudding Club building, Kimberly glanced up at the structure. She knew about the Harvard social club only in reference to the annual award it gave to an actor and an actress. The build- ing was brick with white trim like most buildings at Har- vard. She'd never been inside although it housed a public restaurant called Upstairs at the Pudding. This was to be her first visit. -------------------------------------------------------------- * brick (noun) a hard block of baked clay used for building walls, houses etc * trim (noun) the decoration on something such as a piece of clothing * house (verb) if a building houses something, it is kept there : The new building will house the art collection.
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With her breathing restored to near normal, Kim opened the door and entered only to be confronted by several siz- able flights of stairs. By the time she got to the maitre d's podium she was again mildly winded. She asked for the ladies' room. -------------------------------------------------------------- * confront (verb) to stand in front of someone in a threatening way : She was confronted by two men. * sizable (adj.) (=sizeable) fairly large * maitre d's podium (noun) ? * podium (noun) a small raised area for aperformer, speaker etc to stand on * winded (adj.) < wind (verb) if a fall, a blow, or exercise winds you, it causes you to have difficulty breathing
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While Kim wrestled with her thick, raven hair which refused to do what she wanted it to do, she told herself there was no need to be nervous. After all, Stanton Lewis was family. The problem was that he had never before called at the last minute to say that he "needed" her to come to dinner and that it was an "emergency." -------------------------------------------------------------- * wrestle (verb) [wrestle with something] to try to understand or solve a difficult problem : He wrestled with the problem for days. * raven (adj.) black and shiny * family : [she's/he's family] (informal) used to emphasize your connection with someone who is related to you
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The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sign_of_the_Four/Chapter_1 Chapter 1: The Science of Deduction Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white ,nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sign of satisfaction. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * hypodermic (adj.) used to give an injection beneath the skin * syringe (noun) a tube and needle used for removing blood from your body, or for putting drugs into it * morocco (noun) fine soft leather case used especially for covering books * sinewy (adj.) a sinewy person has a thin body and strong muscles * innumerable (adj.) very many
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Master of the game, by Sidney Sheldon http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/0446355453 BOOK ONE Jamie, 1883 - 1906 "By God, this is a real donderstorm!" Jamie McGregor said. He had grown up amid the wild storms of the Scottish High- lands, but he had never witnessed anything as violent as this. The afternoon sky had been suddenly obliterated by enormous clouds of sand, instantly turning day into night. The dusty sky was lit by flashes of lightning - weerlig, the Afrikaners called it - that scorched the air, followed by donderslag - thunder. * donderstorm (noun) ? sand thunderstorm ? * obliterate (verb) to destroy something completely * weerlig (noun) ? lightning ? * scorch (verb) if you scorch something, or if it scorches, its surface burns slightly and becomes brown * donderslag (noun) ? thunder ?
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Then the deluge. Sheets of rain that smashed against the army of tents and tin huts and turned the dirt streets of Klipdrift into frenzied streams of mud. The sky was a roar with rolling peals of thunder, one following the other like artillery in some celestial war. Jamie McGregor quickly stepped aside as a house built of raw brick dissolved into mud, and he wondered whether the town of Klipdrift was going to survive. Klipdrift was not really a town. It was a sprawling canvas vil- lage, a seething mass of tents and huts and wagons crowding the banks of the Vaal River, populated by wild-eyed dreamers drawn to South Africa from all parts of the world by the same obsession: diamonds. * deluge (noun) (formal) a large flood * frenzied (adj.) wild and uncontrolled * seethe (verb) [be seething] if a place is seething with people, insects etc, there are a lot of them all moving quickly in different directions
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813 by Maurice Leblanc, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/813/Chapter_1 Chapter 1: The Tragedy at the Palace Hotel Mr. Kesselbach stopped short on the threshold of the sitting-room, took his secretary's arm and, in an anxious voice, whispered: "Chapman, some one has been here again. " "Surely not, sir, " protested the secretary. "You have just opened the hall-door yourself; and the key never left your pocket while we were lunching in the restaurant. " "Chapman, some one has been here again, " Mr. Kesselbach repeated. He pointed to a traveling-bag on the mantelpiece. "Look, I can prove it. That bag was shut. It is now open. " Chapman protested. "Are you quite sure that you shut it, sir? Besides, the bag contains nothing but odds and ends of no value, articles of dress ..." "It contains nothing else, because I took my pocket-book out before we went down, by way of precaution ... But for that ... No, Chapman, I tell you, some one has been here while we were at lunch. "...
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The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, translated by Katherine Woods http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Little_Prince I Once when I was six years old, I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing. http://wikilivres.info/wiki/File:Boa_fauve.png In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion. " * magnificent (adj.) very good or beautiful, and very impressive: He gave a magnificent performance. * primeval (adj.) belonging to a very early time in the history of the world: primeval forests * boa constrictor (noun) a large snake that is not poisonous, but kills animals by crushing them * prey (noun) an animal that is hunted and eaten by another animal: a tiger stalking its prey
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I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked something like this: http://wikilivres.info/wiki/File:Sombrero.png I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them wheter the drawing frightened them. But they answered : "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?" My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this: http://wikilivres.info/wiki/File:Boa.png * ponder (verb) to think carefully and seriously about something: She pondered her answer for a long time.
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Chromosome 6, by Robin Cook http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/0425161242 Chapter 1 March 4, 1997, 7:25 A.M., New York City Jack Stapleton bent over and put more muscle into his pedaling as he sprinted the last block heading east along Thirtieth Street. About fifty yards from First Avenue he sat up and coasted no-hands before beginning to brake. The upcoming traffic light was not in his favor, and even Jack wasn't crazy enough to sail out into the mix of cars, buses, and trucks racing uptown. The weather had warmed considerably and the five inches of slush that had fallen two days previously was gone save for a few dirty piles between parked cars. Jack was pleased the roads were clear since he'd not been able to commute on his bike for several days. The bike was only three weeks old. It was a replacement for one that had been stolen a year previously. Originally, Jack had planned on replacing the bike im- mediately.But he'd changed his mind after a terrifyingly close encounter with death made him temporarily conser- vative about risk. The episode had nothing to do with bike riding in the city, but nonetheless it scared him enough to acknowledge that his riding style had been deliberately reckless. -------------------------------------------------- * coast (verb) move, especially downhill, without using power
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But time dimmed Jack's fears. The final prod came when he lost his watch and wallet in a subway mugging. A day later, Jack bought himself a new Cannondale mountain bike, and as far as his friends were concerned, he was up to his old tricks. In reality, he was no longer tempting fate by squeezing between speeding delivery vans and parked cars; he no longer slaloamed down Second Avenue; and for the most part he stayed out of Central Park after dark. Jack came to a stop at the corner to wait for the light, and as his foot touched down on the pavement he surveyed the scene. Almost at once he became aware of a bevy of TV vans with extended antennae parked on the east side of First Avenue in front of his destination: the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York, or what some people called simply, the morgue. ----------------------------------------------- * prod (noun) < prod (verb) to persuade or remind someone to do something that they are not eager to do * mugging (noun) < mug (verb) to attack and rob someone in a public place * survey (verb) to look at someone or something carefully * bevy (noun) a large group of people of the same kind, especially girls or young women * morgue (noun) a room or building where dead bodies are kept before they are buried or burned (= mortuary)
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The Perican Brief, by John Grisham : http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/0385339704 1 HE SEEMED INCAPABLE of creating such chaos, but much of what he saw below could be blamed on him. And that was fine. He was ninety-one, paralyzed, strapped in a wheelchair and hooked to oxygen. His second stroke seven years ago had almost finished him off, but Abraham Rosenberg was still alive and even with tubes in his nose his legal stick was bigger than the other eight. He was the only legend re- maining on the Court, and the fact that was still breathing irritated most of the mob below. He sat in a small wheelchair in an office on the main floor of the Supreme Court Building. His feet touched the edge of the window, and he strained forward as the noise increased. He hated cops, but the sight of them standing in thick, neat lines was somewhat comforting. They stood straight and held ground as the mob of at least fifty thousand screamed for blood. "Biggest crowd ever!" Rosenberg yelled at the window. He was almost deaf. Jason Kline, his senior law clerk, stood behind him. It was the first Monday in October, the open- ing day of the new term, and this had become a traditional celebration of the First Amendment. A glorious celebration. ------------------------------------------------------------ * mob (noun) a large noisy crowd, especially one that is antry and violent * strain (verb) to try very hard to do something
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Executive Orders, by Tom Clancy http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/0425158632 1, STARTING NOW THE FBI'S EMERGENCY command center on the fifth floor of the Hoover building is an odd-shaped room, roughly triangular and surpris- ingly small, with room for only fifteen or so people to bump shoulders. Number sixteen to arrive, tieless and wearing casual clothes, was Deputy Assistant Director Daniel E. Murray. The senior watch officer was his old friend, Inspector Pat O'Day. A large-framed, rugged man who raised beef cattle as a hobby at his northern Virginia home - this "cowboy" had been born and educated in New Hampshire, but his boots were custom-made. O'Day had a phone to his ear, and the room was surpris- ingly quiet for a crisis room during a real crisis. A curt nod and raised hand acknowledged Murray's entry. The senior agent waited for O'Day to conclude the call. ---------------------------------------------------- * an odd-shaped room with room for only fifteen or so people to bump shoulders * Number sixteen to arrive was Daniel E. Murray * curt (adj.) using very few words in a way that seems rude
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"What's going on, Pat?" "I was just on the phone with Andrews. They have tapes of the radar and stuff. I have agents from the Wash- ington Field Office heading there to interview the tower people. National Transportation Safety Board will have people there, too, to assist. Initial word, looks like a Japan Airlines 747 kamikaze'd in. The Andrews people say the pilot declared an emergency as an unscheduled KLM flight and drove straight over their runways, hung a little left, and ... well ... " O'Day shrugged. "WFO has peo- ple on the Hill now to commence the investigation. I'm as- suming this one goes on the books as a terrorist incident, and that gives us jurisdiction. " "Where's the ADIC?" Murray asked, meaning the As- sistant Director in Charge of the Bureau's Washington of- fice, quartered at Buzzard's Point on the Potomac River. "St. Lucia with Angie, taking a vacation. Tough luck for Tony. " The inspector grunted. Tony Caruso had got- ten away only three days earlier. "Tough day for a lot of people. The body count's going to be huge, Dan, lots worse'n Oklahoma. ... ------------------------------------------------ * jurisdiction (noun) the legal power to make decisions about something * quarter (verb) to provide someone with a place to sleep and eat, especially soldiers
The Firm, by John Grisham : http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/044021145X 1 The senior partner studied the resume for the hundredth time and again found nothing he disliked about Mitchell Y. McDeere, at least not on paper. He had the brains, the ambition, the good looks. And he was hungry; with his background, he had to be. He was married, and that was mandatory. The firm had never hired an unmarried lawyer, and it frowned heavily on divorce, as well as womanizing and drink- ing. Drug testing was in the contract. He had a degree in accounting, passed the CPA exam the first time he took it and wanted to be a tax lawyer, which of course was a requirement with a tax firm. He was white, and the firm had never hired a black. They managed this by being secretive and clubbish and never soliciting job applications. Other firms solicited, and hired blacks. This firm recruited, and remained lily white.
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Plus, the firm was in Memphis, of all places, and the top blacks wanted New York or Washington or Chicago. McDeere was a male, and there were no women in the firm. That mistake had been made in the mid-seventies when they recruited the number one grad from Harvard, who happened to be a she and a wizard at taxation. She lasted four turbulent years and was killed in a car wreck. --------------------------------------------- * partner (noun) one of the owners of a business * mandatory (adj.) something that is mandatory must be done because of a rule or law * CPA : Certified Public Accountant * secretive (adj.) unwilling to tell people things * solicit (verb) to ask someone for money, help, or information * turbulent (adj.) a turbulent period or situation is one in which there are a lot of changes
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The Last Class - The Story of a Little Alsatian, by Alphonse Daudet (The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction) http://www.bartleby.com/313/4/2.html I WAS very late for school that morning, and I was terribly afraid of being scolded, especially as Monsieur Hamel had told us that he should examine us on participles, and I did not know the first thing about them. For a moment I thought of staying away from school and wandering about the fields. It was such a warm, lovely day. I could hear the blackbirds whistling on the edge of the wood, and in the Rippert field, behind the sawmill, the Prussians going through their drill. All that was much more tempting to me than the rules concerning participles; but I had the strength to resist, and I ran as fast as I could to school. As I passed the mayor's office, I saw that there were people gathered about the little board on which notices were posted. For two years all our bad news had come from that board - battles lost, conscriptions, orders from headquarters; and I thought without stoppng: "What can it be now?"...
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こっちにも基地害が
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Timeline, by Michael Crichton http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/0345417623/ CORAZON He should never have taken that shortcut. Dan Baker winced as his new Mercedes S500 sedan bounced down the dirt road, heading deeper into the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona. Around them, the landscape was increasingly desolate: distant red mesas to the east, flat desert stretching away in the west. They had passed a village half an hour earlier - dusty houses, a church and a small school, huddled against a cliff - but since then, they's seen nothing at all, not even a fence. Just empty red desert. They hadn't seen another car for an hour. Now it was noon, the sun glaring down at them. Baker, a forty-year-old building con- tractor in Phoenix, was beginning to feel uneasy. Especially since his wife, an architect, was one of those artistic people who wasn't practical about things like gas and water. His tank was half-empty. And the car was starting to run hot. "Liz, " he said, "are you sure this is the way?" Sitting beside him, his wife was bent over the map, tracing the route with her finger. "It has to be, " she said. "The guidebook said four miles be- yound the Corazon Canyon turnoff. " "But we passed Corazon Canyon twenty minutes ago. We must have missed it. " "How could we miss a trading post? " she said. "I don't know. " Baker stared at the road ahead. "But there's nothing out here. Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, we can get great Navajo rugs in Sedona. They sell all kinds of rugs in Sedona. " "Sedona, " she sniffed, "is not authentic. " "Of course it's authentic, honey. A rug is a rug. " "Weaving. " "Okay. " He sighed. "A weaving. "...
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The Burning Wire, by Jeffrey Deaver : http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/1439156344 1 Sitting in the control center of Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light's sprawling complex on the East River in Queens, New York, the morning supervisor frowned at the pulsing red words on his computer screen. : Critical falure. Below them was frozen the exact time: 11:20:20:003 a.m. He lowered his cardboard coffee cup, blue and white with stiff depic- tions of Greek athletes on it, and sat up in his creaky swivel chair. The power company control center employees sat in front of in- dividual workstations, like air traffic controllers. The large room was brightly lit and dominated by a massive flat-screen monitor, reporting on the flow of electicity throughout the power grid known as the Northeastern Interconnection, which provided electrical service in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersay and Connecticut. The architecture and decor of the control center were quite modern - if the year were 1960. The supervisor squinted up at the board, which showed the juice arriving from generating plants around the country : steam turbines, reac- tors and the hydroelectric dam at Niagara Falls. In one tiny portion of the spaghetti depicting these electrical lines, something was wrong. A red circle was flashing. : Critical failure ... 'What's up?' the supre visor asked. A gray-haired man with a taut belly under his short-sleeved white shirt and thirty years' experience in the elec- tricity business, he was mostly curious. While critical-incident indicator lights came on from time to time, actual critical incidents were very rare. ...
The Sky Is Falling, by Sidney Sheldon http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/0446610178/ Prologue CONFIDENTIAL MINUTES TO ALL OPERATION PERSONNEL: DESTROY IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING. LOCATION: CLASSIFIED DATE: CLASSIFIED THERE WERE TWELVE MEN in the heavily guarded underground chamber, representing twelve far-flung countries. They were seated in comfortable chairs set in six rows, several feet apart. They listened intently as the speaker addressed them. ...
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I SHE WAS HURRYING ALONG Pennsylvania Avenue, a block from the White House, shiver- ing in the cold December wind, when she heard the terrifying, earsplitting scream of air-raid sirens and then the sound of a bomber plane over- head, ready to unload its cargo of death. She stopped, frozen, engulfed in a red mist of terror. Suddenly she was back in Sarajevo, and she could hear the shrill whistle of the bomb dropping. She closed her eyes tightly, but it was impossible to shut out the vision of what was happening all around her. The sky was ablaze, and she was deafened by the sounds of automatic-weapons fire, roaring planes, and the wump of deadly mortar shells. Nearby build- ings erupted into showers of cement, bricks, and dust. Terrified people were running in every direc- tion, trying to outrace death. From far, far away, a man's voice was saying, "Are you all right?" Slowly, warily, she opened her eyes. She was back on Pennsylvania Avenue, in the bleak winter sunlight, listening to the fading sounds of the jet plane and the ambulance siren that had triggered her memories. ...
