Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Book Tag (it was this or several paragraphs of whining.)

Every suitable blog topic I can think of tonight deserves more energy than I have to commit to it. For some reason (days and days days of rain? things breaking around my house? a flaming canker sore in my mouth?), I'm stuck with a mild case of the blues.

It isn't helping that I'm reading a wonderfully/terribly sad book, Jacqueline Mitchard's Cage of Stars, or that one of my earliest blogger friends, Patsy, is in the hospital. And if that isn't enough reason to bring out the box of tissues, George Bush is giving his State of the Union address tonight.

At any rate, this seems like an excellent time to latch on to a meme, so I've borrowed the 123Meme from Sunflower Optimism. Here are the rules, freshly cut and pasted from Sunflower's blog:

1. Grab the closest book to you.
2. Open to page 123, look down to the 5th sentence.
3. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog.
4. Include the title and the author's name.
5. Tag 3 people.

Okie dokie, here we go:

"In this example, the Levels command was applied to just the field in the foreground.

"Checking the Preview check box displays your edits in the document window.

"Did you know?"


That stunning bit of prose was from Digital Photography: Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks, by Gregory Georges. It's a really good book for its purpose, but perhaps not suitable for this meme. It was, however, the closest book to me.

As a person who sees things in a hundred shades of grey, never in black or white, I feel free to bend the rules of this meme and get the second-closest book to me. Here I go...reaching with my left hand...reaching blindly over the wastebasket and the paper shredder and the top of one of the bookcases that surround my desk...grabbing something sight unseen...and, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner:

Page 123, fifth, sixth and seventh sentences (Take Two):

"It was beyond cornball. 'Tell 'em to check out the tortoise-and-the-hare story. Remind 'em about the long view.'"

Those three sentences were from Joseph Finder's Company Man,
a really good read if you like suspense.

This was actually kind of fun, and I'm feeling a bit perkier now than I was when I started. I won't tag anybody, but if you want a quickie post for your own blog, help yourself to this one.


P.S. Get well, Patsy.

12 comments:

  1. Okay--you're really starting to freak me out! I just got done reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter recently and am now in the middle of Cage of Stars. Are you following me to the library?!?

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  2. Jodie, to quote Sting: "Every move you make, every step you take, I'll be watching you." ;-)

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  3. Please tell me thats a sock basket by your bookcase and I'm not the only freak in the world that hates to match socks.

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  4. Kate, nope, sorry. It's dog toys. My dogs don't care about them anymore, but the granddogs love to dig in that basket.

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  5. I had no idea Patsy was sick! Is she going to be alright? Carmon

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  6. Velvet, If it's any consolation, they say this particular week, a lot of people get the blues. The holidays are over, bills to pay, winter, etc. etc.

    Since everything I'm thinking of posting is way too involved, I'm going to take your advice.

    Hope you feel perkier soon.

    Holly

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  7. Carmon, Patsy's intestines are blocked and she's battling an infection. For more info, go to her site, click on comments, and follow the links to her sisters' posts.

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  8. Holly, thanks for letting me know I'm not alone in my blue funk. It's already better than it was earlier. (For one thing, it's late at night and it's SUPPOSED to be dark outside. I've really been missing the sunshine.)

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  9. Gee whillikins! You've got a great setup there! I bet you know where to find a book in all thse shelves, don't you?

    I'm lifting the meme, fyi! Hope Patsy gets well soon, and hope you get out of your funk. It seems to be going around, guess it's the end-of-January blues. Soon it'll be the never-ending-February blues. I'm preparing for it. ;-)

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  10. Velvet that is neat the way you have made yourself a little office with the book shelves...good idea... very crafty of you!

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  11. Hey, thanks for taking up the tag, Velvet! You're my number three "volunteer" so I did my bit to promote literacy in Land of Blog. Will have to write this down on my list of books to read - is it scary suspense? Like chopped up bodies and such? Cause I can't deal with blood, not even in black and white, LOL. (no pun intended in ANY way with that last sentence and my last post! LOL)

    BTW, wrote a reply to your question back on my side.

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  12. Janet, you're right, I do know where to find a book in these shelves. It's the books in stacks that didn't make it onto the shelves that I have trouble finding.

    45h Sister, thanks. I didn't have enough wall space to use all these bookshelves any other way, so it was "born of necessity" as the saying goes. Now if I can only think of a good way to disguise the ugly backsides of the bookshelves. I'm thinking corkboard.

    Sunflower, this book was kind of a gory one--not as bad as James Patterson's books--but bloody nonetheless.

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