Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
(published 2015 )

Holiday season, New Jersey, circa 1951:

Miri Ammerman and her best friend, Natalie Osner, were sprawled on their bellies on the thick, tweedy wall-to-wall carpet of Natalie’s den, waiting for the first-ever televised lighting of the famous Christmas tree. The den was Miri’s favorite room in Natalie’s house, not least because of the seventeen-inch Zenith, inside a pale wood cabinet, the biggest television Miri had ever seen.

One of the things I’m really enjoying about this book is the amount of detail the author uses to bring that particular time to life — all the clothes, the brand names, the cars, the foods. Even little things like a girl taking the phone into the bathroom with her for privacy, the long cord stretched down the hallway!

On a more serious note, here’s the stark scene of a plane crash a few days later:

He’d had to elbow his way through the crowd to where the plane lay on its back in the Elizabeth River, belly ripped open, rubble spilling into the frozen stream and onto the banks. The river was a mass of roaring flames shooting a hundred feet into the air and surrounding the mangled wreckage, one wing pointing straight up.

Firemen, policemen and other rescue workers swarmed to the scene, armed with cutting torches, grappling hooks, blankets, stretchers and bags. A white-clad intern, stethoscope around his neck, went with them, but he didn’t stay long — just long enough to know he wasn’t needed.

I’m about a third of the way into this book, and I’m really getting swept up in the drama as well as the period detail. Such fun to be reading a Judy Blume novel again after so many years!

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

• Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
• Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
• After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
• Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!