Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Book Meme

I don't normally do these meme-post-thingies, but I was tagged by the inimitable Steve Bodio at Querencia.

Here is the challenge:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Mine reads as follows (the ellipses were in the original, which included the block quotation):

Osbert Sitwell was well acquainted with the story. He says that the deserters included French, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Australians, Englishmen, and Canadians; they lived
--at least they lived--in caves and grottoes under certain parts of the front line...They would issue forth, it was said, from their secret lairs, after each of the interminable checkmate battles, to rob the dying of their few possessions...

I tag Jason, Peg, Caroline, Anne, and Jordan. Pass it on.

My book? Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory
.

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7 Comments:

Blogger Yvonne said...

Fascinating. I am going to have a go at that.

7:13 AM  
Blogger Jason Pitzl-Waters said...

"Meanwhile, as discussed in Chapter 5, Hollywood and the television industry were also busy, equating female sexuality with witchcraft, and feminism with witchcraft. But very few scholars related these unscholarly yet suggestive explorations back to the seventeenth century. The two readings of witches did not seem to belong in the same world - and one still finds resistance to the idea that they do."

- From "Witchcraft Myths in American Culture" by Marion Gibson

12:27 PM  
Anonymous Chas S. Clifton said...

Oh-oh, Jason, now it looks as though I will have to find that book.

9:00 PM  
Blogger Yvonne said...

Yes, sounds interesting.

Here's mine. I was having a bad day yesterday, can you tell?

3:50 AM  
Blogger Yvonne said...

I just had an idea for a slightly random extended version of the meme:

Pick the first noun in the second sentence of the passage you have produced from the first book, and use that as a search term in Google Books. Pick the third search result, and repeat the first meme with the online book.

3:54 AM  
Anonymous Chas S. Clifton said...

Yvonne--thanks for the link -- I will take a look.

8:51 AM  
Blogger Yvonne said...

If you do the Google books meme, use Advanced Search and check the "Full View" option.

I tried it, but my word was 'parking', which produced some exceptionally dull results.

9:25 AM  

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