ashes, ashes... we all fall DOWN!
i love chewing gum! friends like dandelionwhine. how come more of y'all don't do stuff like this? it's fun!
Instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth [full] sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet!
6. How far did you have to go to find this book?
i suppose i kind of cheated on this since i'm at work and, outside of the book i'm reading for pleasure, the only others available in the immediate vincinity were The Merriam Webster Dictionary or Roget's II The New Thesaurus. so. what's a meme without a little cheating, eh?
The book: Dreams From My Father
The author: Barack Obama
The 4 sentences found on page 123, 5 sentences into the page:
"The term white was simply a shorthand for him, I decided, a tag for what my mother would call a bigot. And although I recognized the risks in his terminology--how easy it was to fall into the same sloppy thinking that my basketball coach had displayed ("There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you," I had finally told the coach before walking off the court that day)--Ray assured me that we would never talk about whites as whites in front of whites without knowing exactly what we were doing. Without knowing that there might be a price to pay.
"But was that right? Was there still a price to pay?"
i have fallen completely, irrevocably in love with Barack Obama. again. it's ridiculous, really. he should have been a novelist. i am really so excited about his next project i can't even stand it. it's like waiting for the new Hobb or Crichton or Grisham. geeked up. i said i'm GEEKED.
all right. enough of that. for kicks, i also decided to do this meme on the book i'm currently working on. this is a test of myself. to see if i can put something i've written recently out in the semi-public. i still cringe. "it's romance," i say to myself with an eyeroll. "romance novelists are to be snickered at. the only people i ever see proudly reading romance novels are eighth graders and those skinny little heifers passing time in the grocery store line. why can't i be Brenda Jagger or something. or at least Eric Jerome Dickey. people seem proud to read his stuff, though i'm rather at a loss as to why. but romance? nah, people read 'em, but they're not proud of it. look how proud i am to carry about "Dreams From My Father". that book shows that i have a brain! i can comprehend stuff! i got some intellect, dammit. romance? all a romance novel proves is that i got a healthy imagination, no sense of reality whatsoever and an odd penchant for cheesy dialogue."
so wow, Lana. thanks for that little pep talk. my confidence levels are way up! you should do motivational speaking. Les Brown's got nothing on you, girl.
The book: Skywriter (1st draft)
The author: Lana Jax
The 4 sentences (tentatively) found on page 123, 5 sentences into the page:
"There had been need. And despite how much she knew of Derek, she hadn’t been prepared for the raw emotion churning just beneath that tightly controlled veneer he wore like armor. It had touched on her own vulnerability, tapped into that part of her which yearned to let go the constraints with which she checked her own emotions. Derek was extremely repressed in many ways, but he had thrown himself into that kiss with a totality that told her he was fast losing his hold on the boundaries he had set long ago for himself."
Instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth [full] sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet!
6. How far did you have to go to find this book?
i suppose i kind of cheated on this since i'm at work and, outside of the book i'm reading for pleasure, the only others available in the immediate vincinity were The Merriam Webster Dictionary or Roget's II The New Thesaurus. so. what's a meme without a little cheating, eh?
The book: Dreams From My Father
The author: Barack Obama
The 4 sentences found on page 123, 5 sentences into the page:
"The term white was simply a shorthand for him, I decided, a tag for what my mother would call a bigot. And although I recognized the risks in his terminology--how easy it was to fall into the same sloppy thinking that my basketball coach had displayed ("There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you," I had finally told the coach before walking off the court that day)--Ray assured me that we would never talk about whites as whites in front of whites without knowing exactly what we were doing. Without knowing that there might be a price to pay.
"But was that right? Was there still a price to pay?"
i have fallen completely, irrevocably in love with Barack Obama. again. it's ridiculous, really. he should have been a novelist. i am really so excited about his next project i can't even stand it. it's like waiting for the new Hobb or Crichton or Grisham. geeked up. i said i'm GEEKED.
all right. enough of that. for kicks, i also decided to do this meme on the book i'm currently working on. this is a test of myself. to see if i can put something i've written recently out in the semi-public. i still cringe. "it's romance," i say to myself with an eyeroll. "romance novelists are to be snickered at. the only people i ever see proudly reading romance novels are eighth graders and those skinny little heifers passing time in the grocery store line. why can't i be Brenda Jagger or something. or at least Eric Jerome Dickey. people seem proud to read his stuff, though i'm rather at a loss as to why. but romance? nah, people read 'em, but they're not proud of it. look how proud i am to carry about "Dreams From My Father". that book shows that i have a brain! i can comprehend stuff! i got some intellect, dammit. romance? all a romance novel proves is that i got a healthy imagination, no sense of reality whatsoever and an odd penchant for cheesy dialogue."
so wow, Lana. thanks for that little pep talk. my confidence levels are way up! you should do motivational speaking. Les Brown's got nothing on you, girl.
The book: Skywriter (1st draft)
The author: Lana Jax
The 4 sentences (tentatively) found on page 123, 5 sentences into the page:
"There had been need. And despite how much she knew of Derek, she hadn’t been prepared for the raw emotion churning just beneath that tightly controlled veneer he wore like armor. It had touched on her own vulnerability, tapped into that part of her which yearned to let go the constraints with which she checked her own emotions. Derek was extremely repressed in many ways, but he had thrown himself into that kiss with a totality that told her he was fast losing his hold on the boundaries he had set long ago for himself."