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So a friend on Facebook sent the following note. I thought it would be interesting way to see what we're all reading and if those lines are still hooky.
I think this one is:
Rules: * Grab the book nearest you. Right now. * Turn to page 56. * Find the fifth sentence. * Post it as a reply here. * Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.
So my closest book doesn't have a 5th sentance - it's a chapter end, but here's the fourth:
"But I was thinking about a suitcase on the floor, about a face I could never quite see, about the sweet smell of cold cream."
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I fudged slightly since the first sentance is the second half of one from the page before and the actual 5th sentance is only 4 words "His face was impassive." so I will actually post the sentance after that:
'You're on no special deployment that I know of, Oshima-san' he said quietly, and around us the deComs exploded in angry reaction.
Woken Furies - Richard Morgan
Which makes me then ask the question. Is that proper punctuation! and how about the adverb!
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The house of Mathias ben Iesu lay halfway down the street, toward the obelisk, its delapidated façade recessed into shadow. - from Men of Bronze by Scott Oden.
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(I cheated--I grabbed the closest fiction book, since I'm surrounded by non-fiction. The excerpt from the closest non-fiction book would be:
quote: Like the giant sequoia, closed-cone pines and some cypress (Cupressus spp.) trees have made significant adaptations to fire, sometimes to the point of dependency, relying particularly on serotinous cones.
Introduction to Fire in California by David Carle.
[This message has been edited by annepin (edited November 21, 2008).]
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"She could go home and sweep the floor and chop the wood and talk to the bees--and read more hand-sewn books and crumbling piecemeal manuscripts about Chalicehood."
CHALICE by Robyn McKinley, fifth COMPLETE sentence, page 56
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"Sydney must have been away from home, as the only name of a relative entered on the forms was that of her sister, Kate Hill, then living at 27 Montague Place, Russell Square."
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" "Om," the man said quietly, "om." " Golden Buddha - Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo
And at the pace I am struggling through it, it will be there for another month. Just another author who has forgotten how to write. Not saying he was ever the best, but I used to read his books in a day, 2 tops, now, the later ones and the ones he co-authors, I am lucky to finish.
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I assume you meant to include the first sentence, even if its a half of one from the page before.
The black suited white executives who ran the Big Five, the companies that controlled Hawaii, hadn't wanted to know what to do with Japanesse that acted American.
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In recent years, these nations and their allies within non-governmental organizations have lobbied strongly to better protect the resources of countries rich in tradition knowledge and biodiversity.
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Point of the exercise: what joy and fun can be found in random things, like what the fifth sentence on page fifty-six of any handy nearby book can reveal to you, and also to others.
I picked up another book, Steve Martin's Born Standing Up, to post another sentence. But, in this case, Page Fifty-Six is blank...
Some of those sentences were intriguing enough that I might even pick up the book sometime and read it. They say to me that even on page 56, the writing should be compelling. In fact, the writing should be compelling all the way through the book.
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"She followed him more carefully through the tunnels of folding chairs and arrived at a cavelike hollow where he was already lighting a stump of candle."
- The Ruby in Smoke by Philip Pullman
Wow, I went through 4 short sentences and I end up at this monolith.
I have 2 books that could be considered the closest, depending what part of my body the measurement starts at (that's an engineer answer if I ever heard one :P)
Closest to my head:
>>We assume that the discrete levels are equally spaced and that they are integers in the interval [0,L-1].
Digital Image Processing, Second Edition by Rafael C. Gonzalez & Richard E. Woods
Closest to my feet:
>>That's according to some of the stories I've heard on Casey Key."
closest to me: "While the division into ego and shadow comes from Jung, it's and idea that humankind has recognized for centuries and that we all immediately understand: that the self is both dark and light, that the world contains both good and evil." oof
The Poet's Companion. Kim Addonizio & Dorianne Laux
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I find it an interesting excercise because Monstewer and I had the same author within the closest distance! Also, it looks like there is a fair percentage of IT people on the boards as well.
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hey aspirit, the closest book to me happens to be Reagan's Game by our very own R. Safley, too, a stack of them (smaller, but still there).
"Bethany could see and feel her sorrow, she didn't need to hear it to know it was there."
augh. why couldn't it have been a really bomb one-liner, like the one about Mr. Shooty? The point of this exercise for me is: Write every line as if it may one day be featured in an online discussion, as if it were a work of art made of words.
Where's the thread on: Being in print means being prepared to look back at your work and see how far you've come (or see how lame you once were).
That's from page fifty-six of my own latest, the rough draft printout that I'm slowly turning into second draft, that sits beside me to my left as I write this...
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"I have forgotten the names and faces of almost every other protester, and that's after two years of enduring the elements with those very good people, berating distant politicans as well as the occasional drivers who showed us their middle fingers."
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Thanks, IB. Years ago I read sections of Gates of Fire over my husband's shoulder. Though he paraphrased the remaining sections to me, I promised myself I would read the book from start to finish one day. I will start tomorrow.
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You must know the address space behind the firewall or router, however, which is often difficult if NAT (Network Address Translation) is involved.
I'm kidding. A friend just sent me some books and this was the closest to me. It's from Hacking Exposed (4th Edition) by Stuart McClure, Joel Scambray, and George Kurtz.
[This message has been edited by KPKilburn (edited December 03, 2008).]
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