I love this book. I've read it twice. First time I picked it up, I read the following passage:
"I was unconscious. I'd stopped breathing.
I don't know how long it lasted, but the engines and drivers that keep the human machine functioning at a mechanical level must have trip-switched, responding to the stillness with a general systems panic. Autopilot failure - switch to emergency manual override.
This is how my life started, my second life.I was unconscious. I'd stopped breathing.
I don't know how long it lasted, but the engines and drivers that keep the human machine functioning at a mechanical level must have trip-switched, responding to the stillness with a general systems panic. Autopilot failure - switch to emergency manual override.
This is how my life started, my second life.
My eyes slammed themselves capital O open and my neck and shoulders arched back in a huge inward heave, a single world-swallowing lung gulp of air. Litres of dry oxygen and floor dust whistled in and snagged up my throat with knifey coughing spasms. I choked and spat through heaves and gasps and coughing coughing coughing heaves. Snot ropes unwound from my nose. My eyesight melted into hot blurs over my cheeks.
The shudder-hacking violence of no air then too much knocked me dizzy, sent the floor tilting away under my fingers. Static behind my eyes bacteria-swarmed dangerously towards another blackout and, snow-blind and shaking, I pushed my wet mouth down tight into the palms of my hands, trying to show more pull controlled, steady breaths through my fingers -
Slowly, slowly-slowly, the world began to reappear in sickly greens and thumping purples and after maybe a minute, it steadied itself into a shaky-solid kind of balance.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and gave in to a last scratchy cough before rubbing out the last of the tears.
Okay. Just breathe, we're okay.
I had no idea who or where I was."
and I didn't put it down till I'd finished. All 400+ pages of it.
You can read the whole of the first chapter here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/chapters/0422-1st-hall.html?_r=2&ref... if you enjoy it as much as I did, you're in for a ride. show less
"I was unconscious. I'd stopped breathing.
I don't know how long it lasted, but the engines and drivers that keep the human machine functioning at a mechanical level must have trip-switched, responding to the stillness with a general systems panic. Autopilot failure - switch to emergency manual override.
This is how my life started, my second life.I was unconscious. I'd stopped breathing.
I don't know how long it lasted, but the engines and drivers that keep the human machine functioning at a mechanical level must have trip-switched, responding to the stillness with a general systems panic. Autopilot failure - switch to emergency manual override.
This is how my life started, my second life.
My eyes slammed themselves capital O open and my neck and shoulders arched back in a huge inward heave, a single world-swallowing lung gulp of air. Litres of dry oxygen and floor dust whistled in and snagged up my throat with knifey coughing spasms. I choked and spat through heaves and gasps and coughing coughing coughing heaves. Snot ropes unwound from my nose. My eyesight melted into hot blurs over my cheeks.
The shudder-hacking violence of no air then too much knocked me dizzy, sent the floor tilting away under my fingers. Static behind my eyes bacteria-swarmed dangerously towards another blackout and, snow-blind and shaking, I pushed my wet mouth down tight into the palms of my hands, trying to show more pull controlled, steady breaths through my fingers -
Slowly, slowly-slowly, the world began to reappear in sickly greens and thumping purples and after maybe a minute, it steadied itself into a shaky-solid kind of balance.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and gave in to a last scratchy cough before rubbing out the last of the tears.
Okay. Just breathe, we're okay.
I had no idea who or where I was."
and I didn't put it down till I'd finished. All 400+ pages of it.
You can read the whole of the first chapter here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/chapters/0422-1st-hall.html?_r=2&ref... if you enjoy it as much as I did, you're in for a ride. show less