Not only did its soaring descriptions of the freedom of flight ("the airplane is a means of getting away from towns and their bookkeeping and coming to grips with reality") inspire me to learn how to fly (I had my first lesson in August and I'm hooked!) it also was part of the reason I gave up my job in advertising (which might as well be bookkeeping) to write.
He set out, he says, with the aim of "seeing if it would be possible to paint a portrait of the war looking out from inside of this one soldier"; the focus of the book, as a result, is tight and personal, veering back and forth between soaring, saturated descriptions of light and dust, minarets and hyacinths, and the all-out screaming horror of the war.
Haddon achieves a remarkable mélange of streams of consciousness, snatches of books, music, TV, private thoughts, lists, letters, all intertwined with sharply observed vignettes of everyday banality, soaring flights of description and odd bursts of heavy-handed portentousness.
Then, around the time of "Hang Gliding," with its description of flight — soaring tones, changing atmospheres — she came into her own voice and worked through her sentimentality.
Kent's descriptions and paintings of mountains and glaciers soaring out of the sea in intoxicating fauvist colors persuaded me that I had to get out on the water.
A concise description of the job might be: the ability to instill soaring confidence in others while suppressing your own perpetual vulnerability.
Played with artful artlessness by Matthew Rauch, Len soars into an ardent description of the cheese's aftertaste that brings tears to his eyes.
The trees are brought to life through colorful descriptions and black-and-white photographs that capture their majestic spans and soaring heights, as well as their perseverance in a city inhospitable to nature.
