2012/52: Bareback -- Kit Whitfield

Bareback -- Kit Whitfield

Interrogators are men, usually, men with missing feet, ruined faces, mauled genitals. The worst, the unusables, the ones who'll never be the same again. ... [they] may be missing a kilo of flesh, but it doesn't slow them down. ... They learned a long time ago that however much flesh you take from another man, it'll never replace your own. [p. 250]

( non-spoilery review )

2012/53: Little Brother -- Cory Doctorow

Little Brother -- Cory Doctorow

...what if I decreed that from now on, every time you went to evacuate some solid waste, you'd have to do it in a glass room perched in the middle of Times Square, and you'd be buck naked?
Even if you've got nothing wrong or weird with your body -- and how many of us can say that? -- you'd have to be pretty strange to like that idea. Most of us would run screaming. Most of us would hold it in until we exploded.
It's not about doing something shameful. It's about doing something private. It's about your life belonging to you. [chapter 4]

( slightly spoilery review )

2012/54: The Odyssey -- Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

The Odyssey -- Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

And the ship like a four-horse team careering down the plain,
all breaking as one with the whiplash cracking smartly,
leaping with hoofs high to run the course in no time —
so the stern hove high and plunged with the seething rollers
crashing dark in her wake as on she surged unwavering [Book XIII, lines 93-7]

( spoilery, I suppose :) )