The Rules of this tag game are:
1. Grab the book nearest to you...no cheating!
2. Open to page 123.
3. Scroll down to the fifth sentence.
4. Post text of next 3 sentences on to your blog.
Well, the stern injunction against cheating is quite worrying. I'm tempted to get a tape measure and draw up a table of the distances all the books in my room are from me. The closest book to hand is the instruction manual to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, page 123 consisting of footnotes to a table of terrain types and modifications. Alternatively, there are 'real' books on my bedside table, the closest of which is that lovely old dictionary of mine, which is more about words than sentences. The next closest is Goursac's Visions of Mars, but page 123 is a photograph of the pathfinder probe.
The book on top of the nearest heap of 'real' books is The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, a collection of works by H.P. Lovecraft. I'm currently at page 60, reading Under the Pyramids, which Lovecraft ghost-wrote for Harry Houdini. Page 123 is halfway into The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Lovecraft is famous, no, infamous for overwriting. The sixth sentence is halfway down the page, and this is a book with small print.
The required three sentences, which span a paragraph break, are:
Muffled musketry sounded again, followed by a deep scream less piercing but even more horrible than those which had preceded it; a kind of throaty, nastily plastic cough or gurgle whose quality as a scream must have come more from its continuity and psychological import than from its actual acoustic value.
Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell to the ground.
And here was me thinking that particular story looked a bit boring. As always, consider yourself tagged if you want to be tagged.
5 comments:
What a violent story (shudder). There's nothing worse than a horrible, bubbling scream.
Have done mine.
My book meme, I mean.
Then the flaming thing burst into sight at a point where the Curwen farm ought to lie, and the human cries of desperate and frightened men were heard. Muskets flashed and cracked, and the flaming thing fell to the ground.
Considering how many words (and good ones, too!) it took to get to this point . . . the best H.P. Lovecraft could come up with was the flaming thing?
Especially after this: a kind of throaty, nastily plastic cough or gurgle
Hee!
Thanks for playing!
Such violent reading material, Pacian (lol)
It's been years since I've read Lovecraft; makes me want to dig the old boy's books out again. I always think that type of reading is best done in the fall - gives it ambiance! :D
Have done. I had a similar problem of "not cheating" because the closest book, The Wisdom of No Escape, had only 110 pages, including Bibliography and Resources. So I had to go to the next on, on the floor, which was Secret Pilgrim, which did produce three compelling sentences.
Have you ever played Arkham Horror?
No, it looks really nerdy. It's probably right up my street.
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