Hmmm...
Jill done tagged me, so here goes:

The meme:
1. Take first five novels from your bookshelf.
2. Book 1 — first sentence
3. Book 2 — last sentence on page 50
4. Book 3 — second sentence on page 100
5. Book 4 — next to the last sentence on page 150
6. Book 5 — final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph.
8. Feel free to "cheat" to make it a better paragraph.
9. Name your sources
10. Post to your blog.

My raw results:
It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Julian can feel the vibration move up the leash and into the palm of his hand. He had two short messages and it took ninety-two seconds. He would ask specific questions, and she would search for answers. And he didn't care.

My edited results:
It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Julian could feel the vibration move up the coiled line and into the palm of his hand. He had two short messages, which took ninety-two seconds to play. Later he would call back to ask specific questions, and she would search for answers. But he really didn't care.

Sources:
Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury
Turtle Moon, Alice Hoffman
The Genesis Code, John Case
The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
The Mummy, Anne Rice

Notes:
I had to cheat a little, since if I took it literally and pulled the first five novels off the shelf, I'd reveal what a geek I am in one of three different ways, depending on the interpretation of "first":

1. Hey — it's all Harry Potter! (And if it was seven or more books, you'd see I have both American and British editions.)
   
2. By skipping the "kids'" books on the top shelf and starting on the first shelf of adult books, you'd see that I own not one, not two, but three copies of The Genesis Code. (I keep the extras for loaners. It's that good that I need to share, but is out of print and I'd be heartbroken if my only copy walked away.)
   
3. It's all alphabetized, all the time. Within each category, that is. Übergeeky. (My first job was being a page at the library. It's ingrained.)

So, I picked one of my favorites from each shelf. Surprising how well that worked out. Then again, all but two of those books could be considered magic realism to one degree or another, and of those two, Anne Rice is, well, Anne Rice and thus meshes well with that genre.

You're It
I generally don't forward meme tags, since it's rare that one of my peeps follows through, but nonetheless I'd be curious to see what Amy-san and Djinn might come up with. Both have much larger and more, um, offbeat book collections than mine.
- posted by Lori @ 10:09:00 PM | permanent link | |