conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Times, York, Tom with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Grief of Others'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first two paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Grief of Others
  I've read that Goethe, Hans Christian Andersen, and Lewis Carroll were managers of their own miniature theaters. There must have been many other such playhouses in the world.We study the history and literature of the period, but we know nothing about these plays that were being performed for an audience of one.
  His lips: how barely pink they were, the pink of the rim of the sky at winter dusk. And in their curl—in the way the upper lip rose to peaks and dipped down again, twice, like a bobbing valentine; and in the way the lower bowed out, luxuriant, lush, as if sated already from a lifetime of pleasures—how improbably expressive were his lips.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was a hackneyed routine that remained somehow fresh, and Jess, who had recognized them both, did not suppress a laugh. At the sound the man turned toward her, shading his eyes. He looked hesitant, then surprised.
  What was his name? Greg, Gregory? They'd sat in the kitchen together for a long time, the day she'd arrived. His presence had mitigated, in a way, the awkwardness of her own unexpected arrival. Was it Jordan?
  Oh, well: "Hi!" she called, waving. She snatched up her clogs, began walking toward him. "It's Jess.We met"—jabbing a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the Ryries' house and enjoying, even as the words flew out of her mouth unbidden, the absurdity of the statement—"over tea and Biscuit."
  When no one responded, she added this word to the board, the chalk flashing with such urgency that the final result was legible only by broad stretch of the imagination. Ms. Nuñez whipped back around to face the class. She wore her hair slicked so tight it looked painted on, except at the back, where her ponytail bobbed and swung.
  Here it came now, so predictable Paul could almost laugh, a jibe from Stephen Boyd, speaking low enough that his remark didn't carry all the way to the front, loud enough to set off a staccato burst of snorts and giggles around the desks in back: "That's how Ryrie's parents had him."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: We know more than we pretend to know. More than we presume we know. Even so, what we know would fill a teaspoon.
  Elsewhere in Memorial Park, as the four Ryries kneel by the river, rinsing from their hands the ashes of the fifth, a teenage girl in an army jacket is writing curse words on her wrist with a ballpoint pen. Six boys in muscle shirts cut a diagonal across the grass, making noises in imitation of drunkenness. A girl who lost a tooth last night executes her first cartwheel. A man who lost his virginity last night tries to assemble a kite. A young woman with a cane bends to drink from the fountain. A little boy, poking in the dirt, finds what he is sure is a diamond. An old man, scrunching his sandwich wrapper, throws it toward the trash, missing by a foot.
  And now as the Ryries start the climb with their hollow box, heading for home where the pancake batter stands mixed and ready to pour, a red-haired man comes down the hill. He holds the leash of a large black dog, and as they draw even with the middle house on the block, they slow, both of them, man and dog, almost involuntarily, almost without noticing, and turn their heads in concert—a movement inadvertently beautiful, also comic—to look openly, hopefully, toward the door.