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I saw you sleeping with your coat on a hill
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time_shark, a meme. I can't remember if I have done this one before.
Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.
"They are a form of armadillo, enlarged wood-lice."
—Jane Gardam, Old Filth (2004)
time_shark, a meme. I can't remember if I have done this one before.Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.
"They are a form of armadillo, enlarged wood-lice."
—Jane Gardam, Old Filth (2004)
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Oh, what one line can do. Unless the one line comes from my closest book which is The Chicago Manual of Style, with the line reading, "Although industry practice in this area is evolving, the fundamental need is clear: persistent, citable, permanent identifiers for electronic content." Though I guess I like "fundamental need" and "permanent identifiers." I could take that further.
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It's the nickname of the protagonist, the retired judge and lawyer Sir Edward Feathers—the acronym stands for "Failed In London, Try Hong Kong." It's an often very funny novel, in a sort of dryly commenting way, that turns out to be heartbreaking; it's about the secret lives coiled up inside people that no one ever looks at, not even themselves. The writing style is amazing, half third-person detachment, half scrolling stream-of-consciousness, shifting back and forth like the nonlinear memory-and-desire timeline of Feathers' life. It's not a history of the twentieth century, either, but of necessity the two are knotted up together. In short, it was wonderful: I pulled it off the shelf on impulse in Porter Square Books and I love it. I recommend.
"Although industry practice in this area is evolving, the fundamental need is clear: persistent, citable, permanent identifiers for electronic content." Though I guess I like "fundamental need" and "permanent identifiers." I could take that further.
Yes. Give me a story from The Chicago Manual of Style!
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Haha, yes ... and where did you get your inspiration for this story, Ms. Esposito? I'd love to say Chicago Manual of Style.
Thank you too, via other post, for your vampire encouragement; I'm working on the old novel now, but I thought about those vampire guys in my Jake story and sometimes I want Jake to visit Physician again, just to see what other tales he wants to reenact. But I'm afraid of that guy.
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Mine is as follows:
"Hour after hour for nearly three weary days he had jogged up and down, over passes, through long dales, and across many streams."
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
And why was this book closest to my computer? Because I was helping a random internet stranger by answering a Tolkien question and wanted to cite chapter and verse. I am such a geek. (Not that this is any way a distinction among your acquaintances.)
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This is true. Also badgers.
And why was this book closest to my computer? Because I was helping a random internet stranger by answering a Tolkien question and wanted to cite chapter and verse.
That's legitimate. I was looking up Cicero's Second Philippic for someone a few days ago.
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It doesn't matter which one I pick. Page 56 (and every other page in the book) is guaranteed to offend someone.
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Including you?
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Nine
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I loved Old Filth—I picked it up for the title, took it home for the detail and oddity of the first few pages, finished it last night. I didn't realize until the afterword that it was intertextual with Rudyard Kipling's "Baa Baa, Black Sheep" and some (shifted forward in time) of his own childhood. I had no more idea of the story than the vague jacket-flap summary. The moral of the story: hunter-gatherer book instincts are always to be trusted.
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Jane Gardam is one of the authors whose new books I just buy. From England, if needs be. I can trust them to be good.
I am very fond of her story collection, The Sidmouth Letters, and of her novels A Long Way from Verona, Bilgewater, and The Queen of the Tambourine, but you won't go far wrong with any of them. She is especially good on adolescent girls and the dotty elderly.
Nine
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She has a new one this year: The People on Privilege Hill. I may return to Porter Square Books for it.
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Nine
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-- Kevin Yank & Cameron Adams, Simply JavaScript
Sorry, can't keep fiction near my desk, it's too tempting a distraction.
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That's still oddly evocative, although I expect only because I don't know JavaScript.
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Very hard to decide which book is actually closest to me, but we'll say:
"Master Drew rolled the body forward toward its side to extract the papers."
--Peter Tremayne, An Ensuing Evil and Others: fourteen historical mysteries (2006)
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Read the book and find out!
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I knew you'd say that. ;-)
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(In love? Devil take me if I ever go there!)
-- Jules Barbier/Jacques Offenbach Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Yeah, I keep scores closest. Under the Hoffmann score is a hymnal, and number 56 is "All Praise to Thee, My God" set to the Tallis Canon. Scary.
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You win.