Friday, September 15, 2006

page 123

I've been tagged with a book meme, by Lia, as follows:

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Scroll down to the 5th sentence.
4. Post text of next 3 sentences on your blog - name of the book and the author.
5. Then tag 3 people.

"And spineless. He went over it again and it looked the same. There was no way out, he would have to speak to her."


Atonement, Ian McEwan


let me just say that the sentence before this bit was seven --SEVEN-- lines long in a paragraph which didn't break for 21(!)lines. and that pretty much sums up the experience i had with this book, whose author had been so heavily praised to me that i actually went out and bought it. which i never do, because i don't like owning books i won't want to read again.

the story idea was good, but i think mcewan went to such trouble to set it up and drag out the reveal, i wandered away more than several dozen times. and when i finally made it to the big finish, i felt just a little cheated that it had been such a meandering road. rarely does it take two months.

ANYway, i tag:

jon
ale
highcontrast (who claims to have started blogging again. we'll see about that)

before you protest, remember, all you need is the NEAREST book. indulge me.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My mom begged me to get that book for her, since it was so highly reviewed. I don't think she even finished it, she got so annoyed with it.

cadiz12 said...

i can sum it up for you in a couple sentences if she wants to know what happened.

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

I'm still trying to catch up on old books, I don't know when I'd get to the modern ones like Atonement.

Mike said...

Since I have a book right here...

"The unexpected drama triggers one of my perceptions and I see a whole string of previous incarnations standing behind her. American cops are identical to Thai cops at least in one respect. We're all reincarnations of crooks."

-John Burdett, Bangkok 8

cadiz12 said...

oh gg, stick with teh classics, at least they've surpassed the test of trendiness.

viking, what a perfect point to quote from. and though i don't know many cops, from what i read in the news it seems pretty accurate, too.