Teaser Tuesday Trifecta

My teasers have been stacking up, so I have three of them today.

So this last month was, as I believe you people say, a bust.  I had high hopes for it too; it was Christmastime in England, and I was intending to do a little holiday comfort reading -- David Copperfield and a couple of John Bunyan novels, say, while sipping an eggnog and heroically plowing my way through some enormous animal carcass or another.

-- The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

During the two weeks before the event he would cannibalize an appropriate police uniform and the accompanying accouterments.  He had already, weeks before, got hold of a police badge and the papers of a defunct colleague -- nothing that could withstand intensive scrutiny, but good enough to pass routine inspection while approaching the cordons leading to the Bolshoi Theatre.

-- A Very Private Plot by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Since Balzac's day, of course, Paris has changed. No one is too ambitious, since its populace is now cosseted in the meagre but constant comforts of the socialist state, and the city's glory days are long in the past.

-- The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund White



Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.