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That's a pretty good description of Ten Days in the Hills (Knopf; 445 pages), a leisurely stretch of talking and rutting that takes its structure from The Decameron and a good part of its spirit from The Kama Sutra. Let's start with The Decameron. In Boccaccio's 14th century compendium of tales, 10 people depart Florence, where the Black Death is raging, for two weeks of food, drink and storytelling in the Tuscan countryside. In Smiley's update, the Iraq war stands in for the plague. Los Angeles, the silkier parts, plays Tuscany. As the war begins...
...after a half-century of trial and error, that may be changing. Several diamondmaking companies are starting to produce high-quality diamonds to rival the stones emerging from mines, and they could supply enough of them to open up new applications for the use of diamond that stretch far beyond pretty pieces of jewelry...
...some bandages?'' ''No.'' Even with no help, I washed my hands and took care of my injuries, and eventually they began to heal. It took me many months of intense effort to be able to raise my arms above my head; it was a full year before I could stretch them straight above me. The deeper wounds where the metal of the handcuffs cut through my flesh almost to the bone left scars that remain with me to this...
...invariably become the new ruling class. Even this very junior official in the party hierarchy could make arbitrary decisions about my life and lecture me and accuse me of crimes simply because he was an official and I was just an ordinary citizen. We were not equals by any stretch of the imagination...
...game’s scoring, a shot that would prove to be a bad sign of things to come for the Crimson. After building a 14-8 lead, Columbia carved out the victory by ripping off a 19-4 run. The Lions hit seven of eight shots during the stretch, including 5-of-5 from long range, to build an insurmountable 33-12 lead. “We came out and we were scorching, there’s not much you can say about that,” guard Patrick Foley said. “We came out on fire...