I spotted a fun and familiar idea on Facebook, to celebrate National Book Week, courtesy of my friend Katie. It comes with an unrelated picture of a horseshoe-horse, from Town Tree Nature Garden, which I visited yesterday.
The idea is to grab the nearest book (I wonder if any of us are more than arm’s-length away from a book?), turn to p.56, and copy out the fifth sentence without identifying the book. Fairly pointless, but also fairly fun. I’ll do three – and probably edit to add the book info in after a while. Guesses are welcome! And then, of course, have a go yourself.
1.) ‘It is like turning such a brilliant light onto a tangle of wool that one doesn’t see the woollen tangle at all, only some peculiar rhythm of curves.’
2.) ‘This Miss Woodhouse was intolerable!’
3.) ‘”Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us.”‘
What fun! The first one has me stumped, but I'll guess Emma and Exodus…would the first one also start with an E?
Oh I shall have to do that on my blog. I saw someone else do this too earlier.
I wonder who decreed p 56 and sentence 5, and why? Anyway, agree with Susan about Emma, but that's all I've got guess-wise. And this is my 5th sentence on p 56 of the nearest book to hand…
"You'll see me there" said the Cat, and vanished.
Hmmm, not too difficult to guess I suspect?! Jane Gray
"The final scene, the terrible scene which he believed had mattered more than anything in the whole of his life ( it might be an exaggeration – but still so it did seem now) happened at three o'clock in the afternoon of a very hot day."
Fun!
Is your middle one Emma by any chance??
Urp that anonymous one was me! Clicked the wrong thing.
"Perhaps we had better stop," she added, her step faltering a little as she spoke.
'Bevan's great rival in the Labour Party was Hugh Gaitskell, who later remarked that he won the leadership in 1954 principally "because Bevan threw it at me by his behaviour."' Fascinating PhD reading…
He had what the rest of the house lacked, scuttling energy, disappearing for hours at a time, leading some critics of the regime to speculate that he might have crossed over to the other side, the dark side, and got a job.
Hint: It's a contemporary novel
I agree with Susan.
Robinson's had a Jacobean cafe on its second floor & here she worked, carrying laden trays backwards & forwards,on her feet for eight hours at a stretch & her legs aching more than they had ever done when she was working for the Stephensons.
I'm thinking the 2nd one is Jane Austen's Emma & I have no clue about the other two but I do like the sentence from the 1st one – quite poetic.
To be boring – can't do first one either, then Emma? and Exodus?
here's mine:
"No strident orchestra forces the diner to bolt beef in rag-time."
Well obviously 2 is Emma and 3 is the Bible…
for me, "It must be a work of time to ascertain that no injury had been done to the spine, but Mr. Robinson found nothing to increase alarm, and Charles Musgrove began consequently to feel no necessity for longer confinement." ;)
Having fun with this. Maybe you will too.
"Nobody else would suck the spoon"
Well?
She sobbed against Slipper' rough neck as the donkey stood quietly, holding her weight.
"In 2009 a Cuban Step team worked in Northern Ireland; this year, a Step team from Argentina will go to work with a church in Ecuador."
– The only book I can reach right now, a fine publication written by my good self. ;)
Well, Samara's must be Persuasion, unless, of course, it's something like Elizabeth Eliot in New Zealand.
OVW, could that be something from PGW?
But every time I came back from a voyage I'd head for here, even before I went home, and tell Mistress Selwyn all about it.
Susan D – yep – you got me there! The first Blandings novel.
Who else could it be? Pure magic!
Ah. Plum does have a certain touch, doesn't he?
Mine is Anne's House of Dreams.