Word: angelic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...forcing us to look under the skin of things. There are all kinds of terrors lurking within the heart of the book - these are for the reader to discover - but the one that is most palpable is the undeniable fact that this book is touched, like Rilke's "terrible angel," by the terror of greatness...
...gold medalists in recruiting foreign-born athletes are Qatar and Bahrain, tiny oil-rich Gulf states that have poached top runners from Kenya, Morocco, and Ethiopia. The effort took off in the 1990s, when Qatar began importing Bulgarian weight lifters, one of whom, Angel Popov, won a bronze medal in the 2000 Olympics under his adopted Arab name, Saif Saeed Asaad. Since then, Qatar and Bahrain have each shelled out millions of dollars to persuade athletes to change their citizenship, tossing in lucrative incentives for setting world records and bringing home Olympic gold...
...Despite the chaos, his mother was strict. "We called her the Terminator back home," he says. "In our house, if you cried about something, you'd get laughed at." In a crowded house, tempers flared. Henry and his brother Angel, 22, were sparring partners. "They used to freakin' pull out chains and knives and s___," says brother Alonzo, 28, who made the trip to Beijing with Angel, their sister Gloria, 25, and an entourage of former coaches and close friends. The practice at home paid off: combined, Angel and Henry won six Arizona state wrestling titles...
...They both entered the residency program at the USOC training center after Angel graduated from high school. (Angel still lives there; he has not developed like his brother.) While most of the wrestling residents had already competed in college and won NCAA titles, Henry still needed to complete another year of high school. He would wake up at 6 a.m. for training, bike or run five miles to school, and then return in the afternoon. "I had no friends," he says...
...didn't. Oh, ye publishing gods and goddesses, must it be the fate of every entertainingly hate-filled monster to be reduced to a lovable curmudgeon? Apparently it must. Our man is visited by a woman with angel wings tattooed on her back who believes that she and he were lovers in 14th century Germany. She is a psychiatric patient who is also a world-famous sculptor of gargoyles. I would very much like to stop summarizing the plot now. Instead, here is a quote from their inevitable love affair: "A cheese strand dangled from her mouth to the edge...