resurrectionsong

April 17, 2004

Breaking the Rules

These are the rules:

Grab the nearest book.

Open the book to page 23.

Find the fifth sentence.

Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

But I have a small stack of books next to me, and I don't want to choose just one. So, lucky readers, I'm doing this three times over.

From Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari, which is a peculiar sort of inspiration to me right now.

Raymond made a call and found out that at a certain time Mahfouz would be in a certain hotel in a certain district near the Nile.

From the book Reagan in His Own Hand comes a little introduction to the foreign policy section of the book.

He discusses his understanding of the sources and symptoms of the cold war; he criticizes the foreign policy of the Ford and Carter administrations; he provides policy prescriptions; and he interprets various episodes in U.S. foreign policy.

Finally, from Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide (a Christmas gift from my co-blogger, StumpJumper), comes a particlualry odd nugget of information.

Unless we are discussing pure documentaries (and even some of those are "sweetened"), moviemakers must take some artistic license to make their work more palatable to the audience.

I've seen this meme in various places, but one of my favorite faux trolls finally gcaught me at the right moment to actually do the damned thing.

Your turn.

Posted by zombyboy at April 17, 2004 03:23 PM | TrackBack

Comments

"Which Mrs. Webber says would the old gentleman like a little thin gruel?"

Blue at the Mizzen. Patrick O'Brian.

Posted by: Velociman at April 17, 2004 03:31 PM

I tried it but my book only had 3 sentences on page 23.

No "See Dick Run. Run Dick Run!" jokes please.

And let me know your thoughts on RMBB, bub.

Posted by: andy at April 17, 2004 05:57 PM

"During the whole of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, a great many enlightened and progressive thinkers had supposed that a main danger, perhaps the principal danger, to modern civilization came from a single political tendency, which was the extreme right, and mostly from a single country, which was Germany, the swarn foe of the French Revolution."

_Terror and Liberalism_

Posted by: Julia at April 17, 2004 08:08 PM

I tried it but my book only had 3 sentences on page 23.

Andy, you need to write that author and tell him about this newfangled thing called "punctuation."

Posted by: McGehee at April 18, 2004 08:46 PM

From Dune: The Butlerian Jihad

"Still, we can't ignore all these worlds - ripe resource-filled targets, planets just waiting to be conquered by Omnius."

If you are a Dune fan, the prequels by Brian Herbert are excellent. They will NEVER be the liturary masterpieces that Frank Herbert penned in the original Dune series, but if you like Dune, and want all the set up information, these books are great. All of these books are written using Frank Herbert's personal background notes that he wrote to make sure the story stayed consistant.

Posted by: Shad0runr at April 18, 2004 11:59 PM