Friday, February 29, 2008

Tag, I'm It

Uh-oh. I've been tagged by Marcellina in the 123 game.

This is a new game for me. I don’t know who started it. But here are the rules :

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Fortunately Amazon just delivered a shipment of new fiction, so my “nearest book” isn’t “Filing Your Taxes For Dummies” or some such.

Here are my three sentences, and they’re long ones. I can’t wait to read the book:

“For the first time in recent memory, perhaps for the first time since meeting Aileen, he had a purpose, and peace. He had always loved a university campus in summer, the mysterious abandonment of the medieval city, with just a skeleton crew of damned souls left to meet his few needs: a single heavy-eyed stamper of books, a single sleepwalking ladler of gruel in the one cafeteria. Now he found that the campus on a national holiday at the onset of winter was the purest distillation of that hush he’d first known in the summers.”

From, A Person Of Interest, by Susan Choi, 2008

Now I have to tag five people. Let’s see (cue maniacal laughter) ... How about Mack, Dolphin, Sinfonian, Madamab (who is in the middle of moving and probably has little more than a Chinese take-out menu at hand) and, just for fun, my old friend Glen Dean?

Consider yourselves tagged!