Sunday, June 15, 2008

Booked!

Right, so Ideasmith's tagged me and apparently the rules are thus:
  1. Pick up the nearest book.
  2. Open to page 123.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the next three sentences.
  5. Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you.
Allow me to assure you that it's not quite as simple as it sounds. The trouble with this tag is that I'm usually not reading less than two books at a time. Not only that, I have the huge bloody guilt-inducing stack of unread but browsed through books waiting on my bedside table, baying for my attention. The third problem is that I'm having some trouble not reaching for the Tolkein or the Orwell (who is, incidentally, one of the nearest books around!) or one of newly finished ones and turning to beloved passages, uncaring if they are on page 123 or not. Or even if I type out the whole page instead of only three lines.

How, then, does greedy Extempore choose?

Like all great procrastinators, I'm going to to let a master, Mr Kesey, sort it out for me. I'm going with the book I'm currently reading instead of merely the nearest. I present lines 6, 7, 8 of Page 123 of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest .
"... Just raise that hand up there—"
"Fffffffuck da wife."
"Alright, forget it...."
I must admit, I would have liked the selection to be a little more illustrative of his glittering narrative, and indeed, prose skills. But I'm about 200 pages into the book and I see that it is much of indicative of the freewheeling madness, the careening randomness that I am coming to associate with this wonderful, wonderful book. By the by, I was supposed to read it at least a month ago, an activity the ex-reviewer and I were going to undertake together. But as it is with the best-laid plans of me, he's long done and I'm still reading it. Sigh...

And now to pass this on:
  1. Geetanjali
  2. Parth
  3. Hyde
  4. Nocturne
So there were to be five but I know only four!~

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Imagine getting tagged by two people! See hydestales.blogspot.com :-)

Anonymous said...

Forgot to mention which post. It called "The Tickets" dated June 12.

-Hyde.

Extempore said...

@Hyde: You insult me - of course I knew you'd already done it. That's no excuse to not do the tag again though !! I mean, really! :-P

G Shrivastava said...

That's a sneaky way to make me post...you know I can't resist tags! But I'm sneakier and more stubborn yet ;-) Check Literary Mosaic in a bit...

Extempore said...

@Plain Jane: But I never claimed to play fair, no? :-)

Anonymous said...

Cannot finish "Bad Debts" so fast...

-Hyde.

Anonymous said...

You know Hyde? You know Hyde! I do, too!

G Shrivastava said...

Tag duly completed and published at Literary Mosaic

Anonymous said...

lol @ Ms. Smith. I first got here from The Smithy. :-)

-Hyde.

Extempore said...

@Hyde: Tch! You don't have to finish the book, dearie :-)

@Ideasmith: :-)

@Plain Jane: Thanking you ever so kindly!

Anonymous said...

Too many unread books!

-Hyde.

Parth said...

Here goes

Book: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Sentences: Certain I am, however that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essenstial dignity of this regal process, beucase in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptible a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing.

The rest of the asks: I'll skip :-)