- Grab the nearest book.
- Open the book to page 123.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
- Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
It used to be necessary to insist to college sophomores that Homer was a great poet and not a writer of pseudo-archaic prose. Until now it has been necessary to insist that Beowulf is a great poem - neither a piece of puzzling prose nor a singsong composed by children skipping rope. Raffel has changed that. All one has to do now is to open this Beowulf at any point and begin reading aloud.