141 words sentence:

"The school sat among maples on a hillside that sloped down to the wide Taganac River, which narrowed and picked up speed and crashed over Bryce Falls a mile downstream near Morse's small rental house, his embarrassingly small rental house, actually, which nevertheless was the best he could do and for which he knew he should be grateful although at times he wasn't a bit grateful and wondered where he'd gone wrong, although at other times he was quite pleased with the crooked little blue shack covered with peeling lead paint and felt great pity for the poor stiffs renting hazardous shitholes even smaller than his hazardous shithole, which was how he felt now as he came down into the bright sunlight and continued his pleasant walk home along the green river lined with expensive mansions whose owners he deeply resented."

Its a single paragraph from "The Falls" by George Saunders.

I was almost free today, started from room for office at 11 am and was back again in the room by 12 noon. How lucky! I read few classic stories and watched the movie, Cast Away, which i liked, and wrote it on CD.

The longest sentence I have ever read, till now, contains 73 words. :

"The whole region was sparsely settled by people of the frontier--restless souls who no sooner had hewn fairly habitable homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity which today we should call indigence, than, impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and privations in the effort to regain the meager comforts which they had voluntarily renounced."

But the longest sentence as far as i know contains more that 1,000 words.

Today, I read 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' by Ambrose Bierce.

How excellenty he describes can be easily understood from what this person thinks before he is hanged to death, " .....And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch."

To begin with, lets start from yesterday, the only day I can look down at clearly, and extract few details which are worth noting.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), who was in the Federal Army till 1865, was involved in the Amercan Civil War, fought several other battles, and later in his career took to writing. Yesterday, I came across his writings for the first time, and read few of his stories: 'Beyond the Wall', The Boarded Window', 'A Horseman in the Sky'.

The best one, if asked to choose, would be 'Beyond the Wall.' He is a fine descriptive writer, maintans excellent flow and pace. A line worth remembering, from Beyond the Wall, is :" Love is a delicious dream; why should I bring about my own awakening?"

Lately, I think I can write quite regularly in My Diary, though, I created this link a long while ago to pin down my day-to-day views of my life, on my life -- about me, about people who matters to me, about people who dont matter to me, about whom i dont know very well in detail.