Book Meme

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1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence.

― Fred, Monday, 26 April 2004 16:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they always said as though she were a woman.
-Hemmingway- Old man and the sea

― Fred, Monday, 26 April 2004 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

William Rogerson, her father, was one of many brothers, all men of uncommon strength and great force of character, quite worthy of the Border Rievers of an earlier day.

The Story of John G. Paton

No, I don't know why it was the nearest book either.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Monday, 26 April 2004 17:30 (twenty-one years ago)

"Because the STYLE attribute allows style rules to be used directly with the element, it gives up much of the benefit of style sheets that divide the presentation of an HTML document from its structure."

HTML Programmer's Reference, Powell and Whitworth, Osborne/McGraw-Hill

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Monday, 26 April 2004 17:55 (twenty-one years ago)

"Og i stedet for jeeper som bulker i lyktestolper, vil det dreie seg om slott i Frankrike og øyer i Stillehavet."

Norwegian translation of Pelevin's Generation P (which I somehow have read only 100 pages of, yet have read four other books since starting)

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Monday, 26 April 2004 17:58 (twenty-one years ago)

"He could even wander over to the high school and watch the varsity cheerleaders practice their routines, which were a helluva lot sexier than they'd been back in Todd's day."

Little Children by Tom Perrotta

― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, 26 April 2004 18:04 (twenty-one years ago)

"Says he found a sweet young thing down there"

from Ulysses - i promise it's not always the nearest book, i just had it out cos pinefox revived James Joyce - C/D on ilx!

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 26 April 2004 18:08 (twenty-one years ago)

"The pilot began to slow." from Deception Point, by Dan Brown. (yes, the Da Vinci Code guy. Shut up.)

― Rabin the Cat (Rabin the Cat), Monday, 26 April 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

"Father Steve, it turned out, had returned recently from a sabbatical in Rome, and for me this contact was a gold mine: He provided numbers for people ranging from the Gregorian University professor who served as the main link between writers and the chuch, to the woman who headed the Jesuit Guest Agency."

From The Miracle Detective: An Investigation of Holy Visions by Randall Sullivan

― Jessa (Jessa), Monday, 26 April 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

"And yet the inquisitor, rejoicing, once again addressed himself to those present and murmured these words which concealed whole tons of irony."

'Pierrot Mon Ami' - Raymond Queneau.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 26 April 2004 19:03 (twenty-one years ago)

"It is generally agreed that the founding father of hermeneutics was the German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermach."

From 'After Theory' by Terry Eagleton. Still not even sure I want to read this book or if I will understand it.

― megan (bookdwarf), Monday, 26 April 2004 19:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Other parts of the North Island also have evidence of vocanic activity; in Auckland, for example, there are over 50 volcanic cones, including most of it's famous 'hills' (One Tree Hill, Mt Eden etc)that rise up from the plains.

Lonely Planet New Zealand

Impressive punctuation - will be there in two weeks!

― sandy mc (sandy mc), Monday, 26 April 2004 19:54 (twenty-one years ago)

O the synchronicity!

"Everything that makes us laugh is close at hand, all comical creativity works in a zone of maximal proximity."

From Mikhail Bakhtin's Dialogic Imagination

― otto, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 02:41 (twenty-one years ago)

'I know, mother,' said Javill, taking her hand again.

-- some Doctor Who book

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 03:11 (twenty-one years ago)

"It was one of the first places to introduce body searches at the entrance."
- Resurrection Man by Eoin McNamee

― Sara L (Tara Too), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 03:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Type the name of a server here.

from 'Welcome to Mac OS X'

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 04:00 (twenty-one years ago)

"The things you like to do."

Already Dead. Denis Johnson.

― badgerminor (badgerminor), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 04:20 (twenty-one years ago)

"allerton was a thin, blond man with an air of arrested age."

the western lands, william s burroughs.

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 05:36 (twenty-one years ago)

"Mr Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation and her unusual tone"

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

― misshajim (strand), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 07:23 (twenty-one years ago)

'By the time I've managed to get up and repair the (6)______ of the night, half the day's gone.'

- Advanced Masterclass CAE (EFL student book)

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 07:53 (twenty-one years ago)

'Here human nature stops short as before the revelations of the Mysteries.'

The Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar

― oblomov, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 08:44 (twenty-one years ago)

'She opens her eyes wider.'

The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood.

― Cathryn (Cathryn), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 11:59 (twenty-one years ago)

'The crown ethers can coordinate metal ions in structures in which the metal ion is encapsulated by the ether oxygens.'

Advanced Organic Chemistry by Francis A. Carey and Richard J. Sundberg

...and I think that explains why I'm logged in to ILB in the middle of my working day...

― maos (maos), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 12:12 (twenty-one years ago)

"Give the closest consideration to the questions that seem most promising."

The Little, Brown Handbook (4th Ed).

― Phastbuck, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 13:31 (twenty-one years ago)

- Good, Stephen said.

[what else?]

― the blissfox, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 13:47 (twenty-one years ago)

"This extreme reliance of California on federal money, so seemingly at odds with the emphasis on unfettered individualism that constitutes the local core belief, was a pattern set early on, and derived in part from the very individualism it would seem to belie."

Joan Didion, Where I Was From.

― slow learner (slow learner), Tuesday, 27 April 2004 16:18 (twenty-one years ago)

"If you're planning to write a narrative, for instance, you can test its dramatic effect on a group of friends."

The Bedford Handbook, 6th edition

― SJ Lefty, Tuesday, 27 April 2004 21:46 (twenty-one years ago)

"He just enjoyed the violence of it all."

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 02:37 (twenty-one years ago)

(From Ruining it For Everybody by Jim Knipfel -- BEST TITLE EVER!!!)

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 02:38 (twenty-one years ago)

"The butcher or cook suspected victoriously proved his innocence."

Last Nights of Paris, Philippe Soupault

― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 04:26 (twenty-one years ago)

"Lifts her cup of black unsweetened coffee."

-William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

― zan, Wednesday, 28 April 2004 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Grabbed two off the shelf....

"There is also a substantial relevant literature on workers control,some of it Marxist in orientation." Noam Chomsky "The Chomsky reader"

"Awash in the glow of the setting or rising sun, his feet an inch deep in the Mekong, his hair a disorderly black nimbus,Father would school us,contorting his hands into an approximation of tiger's claw to scratch or grab an imagined opponent by the face; or, as the crane - moving his arms in circles to block imagined punches, emulating a beak with his fingers - he would teach us to poke out eyes."

"Chang and Eng" - Darin Strauss.
(Chang and Eng is a novel about real people - connected (Siamese) twins. So that colors the above) Noam Chomsky....he should have his own thread.

― aimurchie, Wednesday, 28 April 2004 18:40 (twenty-one years ago)

"A Norwegian - what a country, Norway, its reputation in this respect dimmed by the somewhat inflated reputation of its somewhat vulgar neighbour Sweden; a French girl and a French woman; and a German Swiss."

...from the Mimic Men

― j c (j c), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences.

Strunk and White, "The Elements of Style."

― tomlang (tom), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 22:00 (twenty-one years ago)

"See Go to Dialog line for more information."

The nearest book was a computer manual: PowerBASIC Compiler For Windows.

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 28 April 2004 23:07 (twenty-one years ago)

"A close analysis of the paintings yields the clear verdict that despite whatever intentions he may have had, Tanzio did not, and undoubtedly could not, alter his deeply ingrained, late-Mannerist, Lombardic heritage."

Caravaggio and his Followers, Richard E. Spear

― gratznic (gratznic), Thursday, 29 April 2004 02:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Caravaggio and his Followers, Richard E. Spear

― gratznic (gratznic), Thursday, 29 April 2004 02:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Third from the shelf;

"There: I am quietly slipping into the water's depth, towards fear."

The Outsider

― aimurchie, Thursday, 29 April 2004 03:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Guess the book:

'Eddie and I... this isn't our world, Roland.'

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 29 April 2004 06:35 (twenty-one years ago)

"But now that it's happened, let's get things clear between us once and for all."
-"A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia", Victor Pelevin

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Thursday, 29 April 2004 12:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Murders of this latter sort, by apoison ring out to collect insurance, supplied headlines during 1939 for columns of Associated Press reports on the Philadelphia "Mass Witchcraft Murders".

William Seabrook
WITCHCRAFT Its Power in the World Today
copyright 1940
A Lancer Book - New York

― Nelly Mc Causland (Geborwyn), Saturday, 1 May 2004 12:33 (twenty-one years ago)

"He damned what had replaced it as being based on nothing more than 'lager, football and bodily functions.'"

― Charles Dexter (Holey), Saturday, 1 May 2004 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

"Beyond the warehouse district piles of seasoning lumber merged into an intricate wooden mosaic." - The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima

"Guess the book:"
"'Eddie and I... this isn't our world, Roland"

The Waste Land by Stephen King, probably in Hardback.

― Ryan McKay (Ryan McKay), Sunday, 2 May 2004 08:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Land(s) that is.

― Ryan McKay (Ryan McKay), Sunday, 2 May 2004 08:02 (twenty-one years ago)

two weeks pass...

...nasal hep American-girl voices singing out of the grooves of some disc up through the thorn needle of Allison's mother's radiogram...

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

― steeve mcqueen (steeve mcqueen), Friday, 21 May 2004 07:05 (twenty-one years ago)

'For some twenty years, Amish families travelled to use a public telephone, or borrowed the phone of a non-Amish neighbour.'

(Communication, Technology and Society - Lelia Green)

― Archel (Archel), Friday, 21 May 2004 11:09 (twenty-one years ago)

two years pass...

sp@m

― sp@m, Tuesday, 6 June 2006 00:42 (nineteen years ago)

"Not only was Canada the formal initiator of the original FTA with the United States, it also remains deeply wedded to market liberalization, both at home and abroad."

Stephen McBride, "Paradigm Shift: Globalization and the Canadian State"

― derrick (derrick), Thursday, 8 June 2006 23:28 (nineteen years ago)

'a gesture, therefore, will be its reply.'

― Josh (Josh), Friday, 9 June 2006 01:08 (nineteen years ago)

"I'm m'a dit que souvent ma mere et M. Perez allaient se promener le soir jusq'au village, accompagnes d'une infirmiere."

Albert Camus, L’Étranger

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Friday, 9 June 2006 04:16 (nineteen years ago)

"Il m'a dit que souvent ma mere et M. Perez allaient se promener le soir jusq'au village, accompagnes d'une infirmiere."

Albert Camus, L’Étranger

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Friday, 9 June 2006 04:17 (nineteen years ago)

Saturday, continued the west course, forty leagues, thirty-there being counted.

[WCWiliams, In The American Grain]

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 9 June 2006 05:35 (nineteen years ago)

"Could anyone now be sure that either the Benthamite or the Keynesian world had the answer?"

― Shadow of the Waxwing (noodle vague), Friday, 9 June 2006 07:59 (nineteen years ago)

The spheres are worlds--universes--eons of time--each one a limitless cosmos of matter and energy, entropy and time.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Friday, 9 June 2006 08:15 (nineteen years ago)

I haven't read that book yet (someone gave it to me), and based on the shitty, shitty sentences I saw on that page I don't intend to.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Friday, 9 June 2006 08:16 (nineteen years ago)

"But when she tried to move, she found she couldn't."

DISAPPOINTING.

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 9 June 2006 10:27 (nineteen years ago)

"His previous foray into the concert halls had resulted in something of an overblown prog rock absurdity, with an elaborate, hugely expensive set."

― Revivalist (Revivalist), Friday, 9 June 2006 11:14 (nineteen years ago)

"Tottenham, however, were also playing well, and in Clive Allen they had English football's most prolific marksman."

from "Motson's National Obsession", a list of trivia and stories about football. It's on my desk at work, and comes in handy for pub quizzes.

― Johnny B Was Quizzical (Johnney B), Friday, 9 June 2006 11:25 (nineteen years ago)

I've cheated slightly and went for the nearest English-language book, otherwise this'd be even duller for the lot of you.

"Perhaps he did not talk very much, and I fancied there was towards the end a look of fatigue in the faces of the women on either side of him." (Somerset Maugham, _The Moon and Sixpence_)

― Øystein (Øystein), Friday, 9 June 2006 14:27 (nineteen years ago)

"Colorless, it compared unfavorably with Dvorak's tattoo, but it was accurate and he easily found the intersection of streets that marked his hostel."

-- Jeff Vandermeer, City of Saints and Madmen

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, 9 June 2006 15:54 (nineteen years ago)

how do you like that vandermeer? i was disappointed when i got around to it, i must say

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 9 June 2006 17:20 (nineteen years ago)

Just starting it now
I will report back to you
in a month or so

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, 9 June 2006 17:42 (nineteen years ago)

"This is also a demand of the high standard technical devices which provide us with almost continuous information about the process considered."

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 June 2006 17:55 (nineteen years ago)

(That was from some rather impenetrable text on stochastic calculus sitting near me.)

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 9 June 2006 18:04 (nineteen years ago)

"Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal's Gyrator, Felojun's Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere."

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 9 June 2006 18:07 (nineteen years ago)

tom are you reading the same book as o.nate PLEASE LET THIS BE SO

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, 9 June 2006 18:19 (nineteen years ago)

That's Jack Vance, one of the Dying Earth books, right?

― Ray (Ray), Friday, 9 June 2006 18:21 (nineteen years ago)

ding ding ding

i'd be more impressed if someone could spot the other one, really.

― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 10 June 2006 00:10 (nineteen years ago)

Oh this is a fun idea. From the book on the bedside table -

"There was one faith that suffered worse discrimination: the stateliest house in the area, Bosworth Hall, was owned by a Catholic family related to Sir Thomas More, and their secret celebration of Mass was the cause of occasional raids authorised by the local Justices of the Peace."

Not a terribly interesting sentence, but a great read: The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson.

― salexandra (salexander), Sunday, 11 June 2006 04:30 (nineteen years ago)

"It found expression in the secular philosophy of the Enlightment and in the ideas of the Revolution of 1789 - both of which have had a lasting influence. "

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Sunday, 11 June 2006 07:27 (nineteen years ago)

So REO (maybe even their Bo Diddleyed do-si-do in "Don't Let Him Go" and Troggsy garage sleazing in "Follow My Heart") must be career-woman pop in a way, because "Bette Davis Eyes" just about defines the style, soundwise: bedraggled swallowing-lit-cigs croon protected by dreamily anxious Eurosynths and classy strings and maracas.

― Tim (Tim), Sunday, 11 June 2006 08:45 (nineteen years ago)

that's not "real punks .." , is it?

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 11 June 2006 13:42 (nineteen years ago)

"Presently, the light began to come toward me, waving through empty space like a giant glowbug coupled to a higher brain."

― mike h. (mike h.), Sunday, 11 June 2006 14:09 (nineteen years ago)

i dunno, tom, but i don't see how it could be anything but.

― Sons Of The Redd Desert (Ken L), Sunday, 11 June 2006 17:09 (nineteen years ago)

"A toad spitter. Literally. But I love her."

Robert Coover - Stepmother

― The Giant Mechanical Ant (The Giant Mechanical Ant), Sunday, 11 June 2006 19:11 (nineteen years ago)

(If it had been Anthony Kiedis' biography, I know it would either be "I'm shooting heroin" or "I'm in rehab now." Another 30 pages of that silliness and I'll start Devil's Knot, a book on the West Memphis Three)

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Sunday, 11 June 2006 19:13 (nineteen years ago)

(Tom, Ken, it's from Chuck Eddy's "The Accidental Evolution of Rock 'n' Roll", which I'm enjoying greatly in the few minutes at a time I have to read it between other chores. So you were close, I suppose!)

― Tim (Tim), Monday, 12 June 2006 07:41 (nineteen years ago)

I've got three books on my desk at the moment, and they are

"It wasn't, though, a good place for a discreet conversation - not nearly as good as the lunch queue."

From Never Let Me Go

'I said, "Damn fool, I'm shot, that's what happened."'

From Interference: Tapehead versus Television

"She shook her head. 'Oh, no. That'd be a pretty bad chronoclasm - particularly if they happened to kill somebody.'"

From John Wyndham's The Seeds of Time

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Monday, 12 June 2006 10:54 (nineteen years ago)

"Could a Chancellor's flaxen-haired daughter, freshened by a strapping young Doctor of Philosoph like those in the Tales, surpass Mary Appenzeller's output of seventy-three pounds of butterfat in her first year's milking?"

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Monday, 12 June 2006 12:13 (nineteen years ago)

"A rhizome book, not a dichotomous, pivotal, or fascicular book."

-Deleuze/Guattari "a thousand plateaus"

― steve ketchup (steve ketchup), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 14:03 (nineteen years ago)

Them was days, Joxer, them was days.

(Really! That's ace.)

― the finefox (the pinefox), Wednesday, 14 June 2006 15:31 (nineteen years ago)

My page 23 doesn't have five sentences! (Jimmy Corrigan – The Smartest Kid On Earth.) The fifth sentence from page 23 onward, though:

'Jimmy... Jimmy from work – huh?'

― Orange (Orange), Thursday, 15 June 2006 21:04 (nineteen years ago)

Die Regel kann ein Behelf des Unterrichts im Spiel sein.

The rule may be an aid in teaching the game.

(Philosophical Investigations, p.23 and 23e.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 15 June 2006 21:20 (nineteen years ago)

"This table will aid the DM in determining the percentage chances of a player character lycanthrope changing into and out of wereform."

― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 15 June 2006 23:52 (nineteen years ago)

"One summer afternoon -- in my sixth year -- while peering under the swinging doors of the neighborhood saloon, a black man caught hold of my arm and dragged me into its smoky and noisy depths."

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, 16 June 2006 13:29 (nineteen years ago)

"There were not so many of the aeronautic peddlars."

China Mieville, Iron Council

― Zora (Zora), Friday, 16 June 2006 17:31 (nineteen years ago)

"Payment was four shillings (one-fifth of a British pound) per ton of oil produced."

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 19 June 2006 04:12 (nineteen years ago)

Technically that was a cheat. The closest book to me was actually Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow, and the fifth sentence on page 23 simply reads "Sunset."

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Monday, 19 June 2006 04:13 (nineteen years ago)

"I for my part could not bear to look at that heavy pock-marked face with its bestial saturnine cluster of tormented features smeared on it-could not bear to think of his gross intimacies with her: those sweaty little hands covered as thickly as a porcupine with black hair"

Lawrence Durrell, Justine. I resisted the urge to find a "nicer" sentence, ;)

― Ann Smith (Liza Bennet), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 06:09 (nineteen years ago)

"They went from instruments/microphones to the phonographic recorder."

Ray Baragary, The Billboard Guide To Home Recording

― Marmot 4-Tay: forth-coming, my child. forth-coming most righteous champion (mar, Thursday, 22 June 2006 23:06 (nineteen years ago)

" ||: FRLL FLRR FLFR FLFR :|| "

George Lawrence Stone, Stick Control for the Snare Drum

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Friday, 23 June 2006 02:03 (nineteen years ago)

"Consider your worst-case options before you plunge in"

― derrick (derrick), Sunday, 25 June 2006 23:43 (nineteen years ago)

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