Darling Min has tagged me with The Sentence Meme. Her result was so charming, I could not resist.
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next three sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
6. Tag five other people to do the same.
“The map does puzzle Tantivy. It cannot be put down to the usual loud-mouthed American ass-banditry, except as a fraternity-boy reflex in a vacuum, a reflex Slothrop can’t help, barking on into an empty lab, into a wormhole of echoing hallways, long after their need has vanished and the brothers gone to WW II and their chances for death. Slothrop really doesn’t like to talk about his girls: Tantivy has to steer him diplomatically, even now.”
… from Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.
This is where instruction number 6 asks me to place five of your names in a row. However, rather than pick and prod at the lot of you, I’m going to add two favourite passages from Books I Have Never Read.
”The light changes and he has that wish again: that every step he ever took left a neon footprint. Every step, from his first to these. That way he could catch up with himself, track himself through the city and years. See that the last time he walked this block he was tipsy or in love. Here determined, there aimless like today, no particular place to go. If he could see his footprints, he’d know his uncharted territories, what was yet, and where never to return. Some of the old stores are gone since last time. What comes at their address is bright and shiny like new keys. New keys fit new locks. It is rare here that the new establishment is more downscale and if only he could make his self and ideas like real estate: ever higher. God knows he has tried to keep up with the changing market but his new shirt will only go so far- once they step inside they recognize the same old merchandise and demur. He has swept up, his brain gets so dingy sometimes, but they will not see his renovations and he is a dead trade, something remembered only by old phonebooks. Blacksmith, knife sharpener. Walk faster.”
…from The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead.
“From the sky a frail black fragment, tumbling as in a dream, drifts down to settle on my arm. Upon it, barely visible against its black, the faintest silver tracery of lines may yet be seen: a gentle curve that is perhaps a stream or else some buried lane, the clustered spidermarks that may be trees viewed from above.
It breaks against my wrist and falls to dust, caught by the wind to scatter over the cremation fields.”
… from Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore.