Maybe I’m easily amused but I really liked this one!
Rules:
* Take the closest book from you
* Open to the page number 56
* Look at the 5th sentence
* Write down this sentence as your status
* Comment on your status and copy these instruction in a comment
* Don’t look for the book you prefer or the coolest but the closest book
Mine is:
Marius’ imperious habit of awarding citizenship to whole cohorts of Italian allies as a reward for exceptional valour was gratefully remembered.
That’s from Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic. It’s a great book – I’ve been watching the second series of HBO/BBC’s Rome and thought it was an apt choice to start rereading last night, so it was right next to me on the couch.
pg. 56 is a picture of a Howard Arkley painting called “The Proton Neutron”. Do I just get the next closest book?
I think so!
“Mickiewicz’s childhood around Nowogrodek and his years as student and teacher in Wilno and Kowno provided him with the landscapes and society that were woven into the luminous fabric of his poetically remembered Lithuania,” From Simon Schama “Landscape and Memory”.
The nearest books to me are those sorted by size of volume, hence the Arkley catalogue! I have a humungous pile of JSTOR printouts closer I flicked though some but no journal articles one a page 56 could be easily located.
Just on “Rome”, Mark, do you think a classics scholar could enjoy it? I found since I started on this path that my toleration for “Olden times” documentary considerably diminished … would it survive “Rome”? I still enjoy “I, Claudius”, mind.
Mine is “It would be difficult to convince a court without more information that an agency relationship existed” and then there’s a little call out type comment that points to this sentence and says “A weak argument”.
That’s from that worthy book that sits to the right of the keyboard called Legal Problem Solving.
Mine is “The kind of empirical analysis that is involved here is not hermeneutic.” It’s from Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom. He talks about Foucault but doesn’t mention if he’s postmodern or not;-)
“That wasn’t really a fight, though’.
From ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ in ‘The Five Great Novels of James M. Cain’.
You see my laptop is in my office and I don’t keep books in my office. I only have bloody, boring files, newspaper clippings, DVD’s videotapes, post-it notes etc. I know that’s boring, but there you go. So, I went into the lounge-room and grabbed the first book I came across.
Mine is “The average age was twenty-six, and, for the common seaman, the age would have been even lower were we to exclude the ages of the officers, who were usually older.” (Marcus Rediker, ‘The Slave Ship. A human History”, New York, 2008)
I’m reading this book at the moment and it was on a chair behind where I sit at my computer.So it was the closest book.He’s a Marxist historian specialising in Marine history, mostly.
Mark I read most of Hollands book and found it boring, full of he said and then someone else said and this army moved to here and this bloke was conspiring against that bloke and so on without any significant analysis or coherence. Lots of trivia.
Maybe I was put off it because the last book I read on Rome type stuff was by Michael Parenti who wrote a biography of Julius Caesar which has analysis way beyond that of Holland’s personality politics.
I recommend Parenti’s book, unless of course you’ve been there and read that.
Now back to the game we are playing…left arm out, grab book, “The Mythic Past” by Thomas Thompson, page 56, sentence 5 is “Right from the opening song of his collection the editor reads the Isaiah tradition mythologically and theologically.”
Well don’t we all to some extent, read our traditions mythologically that is?
Oh and did you know that, according to the dictionary the word ‘theology’ refers only [or at least essentially] to Christianity? “…the science [sic] that treats of God [singular,capitalized].”
Tyro Rex – I remember reading that book (Simon Schama “Landscape and Memory”) ages ago and it made a huge impact on me at the time. Must dig it out again – thanks for the reminder!
The closest book was Jack Turner’s Spice: The History of a Temptation, in which p 56 is a blank page between Parts 1 and 2, so I moved on to p 57, where like Mark I found myself among the Romans, more specifically the Roman Army camping in what is now the Ruhr Valley and mowing down the locals, as was their wont:
‘The fearsome tribesmen of the Sugambri were ground down, relocated, or put to the sword.’
If that is cheating, the next closest book was The Norton Anthology of Poetry, where we find an anonymous 15th century lyric:
Which is seasonally appropriate as this is the text of a Christmas carol.
… gumagamit ng banyo … use the bathroom?
If you predispose yourself to viewing it as a chance to see whether they can outdo Suetonius for gutter gossip about the Caesars, it’s worth watching and quite entertaining on that level. The cast is generally excellent.
They don’t muck around with the character and political conflicts of Caesar Dictator or Pompeius Magnus too much, but they do totally misrepresent what is known of the family life of the young Octavian and his mother and sister, they fail to acknowledge that Antony was Caesar Dictator’s cousin, they continually misuse “pleb” when they mean “prole” etc. They make Cato the Younger an older man than Caesar Dictator. The various Wikipedia entries on the historical inconsistencies for each of the characters are quite thorough and should give you a snapshot.
That said, the details of the sets are extraordinarily well done. The clothing, the food eaten, the utensils and furnishings are a monument to punctilious research, with very few anachronisms (the Senate’s sculpture of the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus has the same Renaissance-era cherubs in place as it did in I, Claudius, sadly). At least they didn’t give the riders stirrups!
Oh yes, the meme:
The book is Falling Free, by Lois McMaster Bujold, set on a space habitat where humans have been genetically engineered for life in free-fall with a second set of arms sprouting from the hips instead of legs (all a secret corporate project, with the “quaddies” treated as company assets rather than as employees). It’s a tale of intrigues and rebellion.
Strictly speaking, there are three volumes all exactly within the each of the rules…
George Bernard Shaw, “Major Barbara,”: “I asked The Times to take it up. I asked the Lord Chamberlain to take it up. But it was just like asking them to declare war on the Sultan. They wouldn’t.”
From Shaw, “Mrs. Warrens Profession:” “I’m afraid we’re giving trouble.”. (Context not so interesting)
From Sandburg, “Rootabaga Stories”:
“Blixie Bimber liked him because he was a steeplejack, a little, but more because he was a whistler.”
I vote for Blixie Bimber.
“Be careful when you are tensing your neck and back. Don’t tighten your muscles beyond what feels comfortable for you” from Taking Care of Youself and Your Family by John Ashfield.
The book was in a handout package at a local screening of The Mens Group, highly recomend the movie
‘Says the Cookie to the Drummer, “Is that all ye got to say…?”‘
On that score I’m quite relieved that the closest thing to hand was Through the Looking Glass!
“How queer it seems, ” Alice said to herself, “to be going messages for a rabbit!”
As for Rome, I thought it may have played a bit with the facts ‘as they are known’ but the careful set design made things fall into place for some childhood memories of wandering around Roman ruins. I also enjoyed the idea that Dr Who borrowed the set for the episode set in Pompeii.
“Although it does not bear on the present discussion, the company made a handsome profit that year and did not fail to do so for many years thereafter.” The Essential Galbraith (J.K. Galbraith). The company in question is Ford, the article is called “The Imperatives of Technology”, and the section in question discusses Ford’s opening in 1903.
I wish it had been a requirement for the seventh sentence, which reads, “In accordance with current fashion in automobile nomenclature, it was called, one assumes inappropriately, a Mustang.”
‘In 1868, in China, the French missionary Pere Armand David saw the skin of a black-legged white bear.’ (Steve Jones, ‘Almost Like a Whale’) Only just started reading this so can’t comment too much. However it has a sweet picture of a swimming Polar bear on the cover, as well as an embossed Darwin, Whale and Mollusc.
“It was not merely that Curtin believed that reform and the promise of reform were the justification for the burdens and sacrifices of the war.”
Coombs, H.C. (1984) “John Curtin: A Consensus Prime Minister?” Arena 69: 46-59.
I have it for the next article, “Post-Strucutralism as Ideology” by Gerry Gill.
“If you can see little black prickly things coming out of the nozzle, that’s also hard-water fur.” (From the “Shower” section within the “Bathroom” chapter of Spotless by Shannon Lush and Jennifer Fleming. I am not going to make this my Facebook status.)
“Meaty, savoury and drying but not excessively overcooked, this generous, juicy and smoky grenache has a spicy bouquet of plums and redcurrants over suggestions of smoked meats.”
From Jeremy Oliver’s Australian Wine Annual 2008.
I might open some red later this evening …
Hmmm … becaue my ‘puter is in my study, the closest book to hand was “Introduction to the Theory of Computation”. Apparently, my status is, “Then we modify the transition function of M to place additional fingers initially to all possible states that can be reached by going along epsilon arrows after each step.” (Sorry, no Greek characters on this keyboard.)
That probably makes sense in context.
Bony is the most general word and is relatively free of connotations.
Penguin Modern Guide to Synonyms & Related Words, Hayakawa & Fletcher, Penguin, 1987
‘The scribe Any wrote for his son:
“Take a wife while you’re young,
That she make a son for you;
She should bear for you while you’re youthful,
It s proper to make people.”‘
- Worlds of History, A Comparative Reader, Kevin Reilly
Well I am married and have two sons – only I married at 39, bit late to remedy.
“Twice she shed tears over it.”
Catherine Carswell, little-known scottish novelist and D.H.Lawrence groupie, The Camomile, Virago.
“Are there any unattractive shadows dominating the picture?”
Taken from the section entitled “Viewpoint”, in the Collins Digital SLR Handbook by John Freeman. It was given as a gift from Mushroom’s parents after Mushroom herself bought me an SLR for my birthday recently.
“They offered us danger, pleasure, food, and an outlet for our sharpening skills with spears.”
From I, the Aboriginal by Douglas Lockwood 1962!
It’s a quotation from John Cleves Symmes’s Circular Number 1, from a chapter of Paul Collins’s Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymit, and Rotten Luck. That chapter appears to have been plagiarised here.
(The book was left near the computer after I wrote this post.)
“However, with no natural immunity to draw on, unable to hunt or gather because of the painful eruptions, and with the tribal structure collapsing around them, the Iora hunters had more to be concerned about than their good looks.”
From Leviathan: The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney by John Birmingham. I’m finding the book rather puzzling at the moment – I’m halfway through, and the advertised presentation of ‘Sydney as psychopath’, of its ‘dark, corrupted heart’, a ‘huge, black, spitting and stammering denunciation of the history of the city of Sydney’ hasn’t really appeared. It seems to be a fairly standard thematic history of Sydney, except written in a gonzo style. Perhaps I just haven’t got to the good parts yet.
“Ironically, string pieced quilts closely resemble another American ivention begun some ten years after the Civil War, Crazy quilt throws”.
From Zen and the art of quilting By Sandra Detrixhe
Ironically, the book closest was one I never finished. I also liked that the fifth sentence on page 56 started with “ironically”.
IN the tradition of William Burroughs’ cut-ups, and with apologies for the long comment, I have made a story of our sentences:
I declare that the earth is hollow and habitable within, containing a number of solid concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees. Mickiewicz’s childhood around Nowogrodek and his years as student and teacher in Wilno and Kowno provided him with the landscapes and society that were woven into the luminous fabric of his poetically remembered Lithuania.
Right from the opening song of his collection (‘Says the Cookie to the Drummer, “Is that all ye got to say…?”’), the editor reads the Isaiah tradition mythologically and theologically:
The scribe Any wrote for his son:
“Take a wife while you’re young,
That she make a son for you;
She should bear for you while you’re youthful,
It’s proper to make people.”
It would be difficult to convince a court without more information that an agency relationship existed. Oh, it’s all right for the little kids – I used to love The Little Compressor That Could – we made our creche mother read it over and over. Twice she shed tears over it.
Although it does not bear on the present discussion, the company made a handsome profit that year and did not fail to do so for many years thereafter. Ironically, string pieced quilts closely resemble another American invention begun some ten years after the Civil War, Crazy quilt throws. In 1868, in China, the French missionary Pere Armand David saw the skin of a black-legged white bear. If you can see little black prickly things coming out of the nozzle, that’s also hard-water fur. Are there any unattractive shadows dominating the picture? Be careful when you are tensing your neck and back. Don’t tighten your muscles beyond what feels comfortable for you. I’m afraid we’re giving trouble.
It was not merely that Curtin believed that reform and the promise of reform were the justification for the burdens and sacrifices of the war. The kind of empirical analysis that is involved here is not hermeneutic. The average age was twenty-six, and, for the common seaman, the age would have been even lower were we to exclude the ages of the officers, who were usually older. Marius’ imperious habit of awarding citizenship to whole cohorts of Italian allies as a reward for exceptional valour was gratefully remembered.
However, with no natural immunity to draw on, unable to hunt or gather because of the painful eruptions, and with the tribal structure collapsing around them, the Iora hunters had more to be concerned about than their good looks. They offered us danger, pleasure, food, and an outlet for our sharpening skills with spears. The fearsome tribesmen of the Sugambri were ground down, relocated, or put to the sword.
That wasn’t really a fight, though.
“In comes the kid with his transistor radio, grooving to Chuck Berry.”
That is a quote from Pete Townsend in Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces. a few weeks ago i was thinking about The Osmonds, ’cause of Prop 8, as you do. I remembered that there is a recording of Marie doing a dada sound poem on teh accompanying cd. the cds are packed away ’cause of kid proofing measures, so the book is gathered from its great height. alas the poem is not mentioned in the index and unwilling to navigate the whole 447 pages to seek it i placed the book to one side where it become the resting place for a stack of notes, a still folded complementary wall planner, some empty, used window envelopes and a hastily scribbled recipe from l and l.
Marcus is quoting Townsend to illustrate the sence of freedom and rebellion that he wants us to belive Rock and Roll represented in ‘68. then he claims that radio airplay stagnated and for years that seemed like decades you could reliably hear Maggie May, Stairway etc on the radio. these celebrations of freedom got transformed into a agents of oppression and negation. then the Sex Pistols turned up and used their instruments like great freaking lightsabers to purge us of the cold, stolid, flavourless stew that subtituted for blood in the veins and arteries of this great nation.
“Not the least of Captain Spring’s eccentricities was that while he’d got crimes on his conscience that Nero would have bilked at, he was a fanatic for the proprieties, like Sunday observance and afternoon tea- he’d drop manacled niggers overboard at a sight of the white duster, but he was a stickler when it came to lining out the hymns while his equally demented wife pumped her accordian and his crew of brigands sang “Let us with a gladsome mind”. ”
Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser.
“Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.”
“Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser.”
GregM, Flashman is absolutely glorious historical fiction, I must say.
“1/2 tsp vanilla essence Grated zest of 2 lemons (4 to 6 tsp)”
500 cookies by Phillipa Vanstone. Need I say more. A present from son #2. I was thinking about eating the pictures. I need a sugar hit.
‘Hard Boiled Eggs with Green Sauce.’ The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.
The computer is on the dining room table and the cook books are closest to hand. It was Marcella and Stephanie Alexander in a dead tie – The Cook’s Companion:
I’ll offer the appropriate quote from the book that is now closest to me, before commenting on Rome!
Which I’m sure is true!
It’s from Time Fetishes: The Secret History of Eternal Recurrence by Ned Ludacher.
Tyro Rex – I think that tigtog has summed it up well – in parts, the story is a tad altered – but more telescoping events than being unfaithful to them. Sometimes the Varenus/Pullo subplot (which is meant to show how the plebs were experiencing all this – and it’s cute that the two soldiers in question were mentioned in Caesar’s Gallic Wars) has too much of a life of its own. And I think there’s some warrant in the Atia/Octavia/Servilia plots in the argument that women played a big role behind the scenes which didn’t make it into the books. But generally I found it extremely enjoyable – and I think it renders the strangeness and the specificity of Roman politics, and dare I say it, mores, very well in an extremely lush, compelling and visually appealling production.
I also love Antony and Atia. And Caesar and Pompey and Cicero are all beautifully portrayed.
I think some serious input from classical historians did go into it.
hannah’s dad @ 8 – I half agree with you. The Michael Parenti book is certainly superb, and there are a whole range of other books on Caesar/Octavian/Fall of the Republic/Civil Wars etc. that I’ve enjoyed. But Holland is good for reminding oneself of the storyline, and I think he writes well, and sneaks a lot of good cultural and sociological detail in there. He’s maybe a bit bombastic in style, so could be a matter of taste legitimately.
Hmm: “The Prince of Wales had sat in council with his father – because he was heir and because he understood English”.
The First Four Georges J.H. Plumb.
“‘Didn’t I say “take it easy” my brother?’ Andan caught his breath again and continued.”
From Shumaisi, the second part of a trilogy by Turki Al-Hamed. The first ‘Adama’ was a coming of age story of a teenage high school boy in a small Saudi town. This novel is set in Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh. Al-Hamad has four fatwas claiming his life. He says “Where I live there are three taboos: religion, politics and sex. It is forbidden to speak about these. I wrote this trilogy to get things moving.’ Cool guy continues to live in Riyadh.
“I believe, however that this theory offers no useful point of departure for future development.” Albert Einstein in a piece called Where I disagree with other Physicists. From “Genius in their Own Words: The Intellectual Journeys of Seven Great 20th Century Thinkers”. David Ramsay Steele. (Editor).
Like others, I don’t have many titles apart from computer books in my study. The above was nonetheless the closest. I must read it now that I have unearthed it! I do recall that I picked it up from a discount table at Paperchain (ACT) a couple of months ago.
“These functions allow to simplify expressions by replacing some category of trigonometric functions by another one”
From HP 50G Graphing Calculator User Manual. A truly dreadful manual that explains almost nothing about the device and, as seen above, is not even grammatical in some places and completely baffling and opaque in most.
“The amount of money in our pocket will not change as we walk down the street, jostling it up and down; the number of books we have will not change if we pack them up in a box, load them into our car, drive one hundred miles, unload the box, unpack it and place the books in a new shelf”
Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid.
Nearest as it was propping my right monitor up to a more ergonomic height. Not because its a bad book, but because it is exactly the same thickness as “Introduction to Quantum Mechanics” – which is propping up the left monitor.
“Serve with rice”
From the Complete Asian Cookbook, just happened to be near the bookshelf with all the cookbooks. Would have preferred the 4th sentence – “Add hot water, cover and simmer until gravy is thick, then stir in garam masala and the halved eggs and heat through.”
New book. On my desk near my computer.
‘But happy had it been for both Sides of the Water, for the Stamp Act to have had a temporary Enforcement, ’till the Colonies had felt ye.’( Peter Oliver’s Origins and Progress of the American Rebellion.)
This book has just arrived in the mail after months of waiting. I haven’t started reading it yet, but know enough of the context from other books to guess that Oliver, a notable Massachusetts Tory, was bemoaning the fact that the rebellious Americans hadn’t given the notorious Stamp Act a try. At least, I think that is what is going on. I’m restraining myself from reading the book till I’ve finished the Rediker cited above. Oliver is, I gather, one of the major primary sources for the British side of the American Revolution. Guess I’ll soon see.
Re Leviathan – if I remember rightly, (its been years since I’ve read it) -the sleaze gets piled on a bit later in the book.
From “HTML and XHTML, The Complete Reference”. A pretty typical technical book in that the first two thirds are heavily padded out examples with smatterings of awful humour, in which it’s impossible to find anything useful except by accident, and the last third is an incredibly dense set of specifications, references and tables with mind-bending detail in which it’s impossible to find anything without re-reading the pages several times. Thankfully, the really useful bit (the books index) is functional, which is good because this tome is 932 pages.
Yep, that means I’m at work. The whole web 2.0 revolution is really painful, so I hope you guys appreciate it
“The conservation of 75000 hectares of regionally depleted and regionally well retained existing native vegetation is considered necessary as some of these areas of native vegetation range from severely degraded condition through to good condition.”
From the Murrumbidgee Catchment Action Plan. This is actually the second book I picked up as the first, Bushcare with Care, didn’t have 56 pages.
As water is heated, turbulence distributes the heat through a considerably larger mass.
Thewetmale
have you tried the Raan; roast leg of lamb, Kashmiri style, on page 61, finiky, but bloody good.
Bryn @ 30 – Leviathan is a great book. Stick with it.
Mark – thanks for the info, maybe I will check it out. It seems as if they get the basics right (e.g. no 2nd century A.D. style legionnaries).
Quote (now I’m at work)
“Such a mapping can be stated as a rule (in other words, what we normally think of as a function), or as an enumeration {25:5, 16:4, 9:3}”
From Mellor, Stephen J, et al, “MDA Distilled: Principles of Model-Driven Architecture” (architecture as in software architecture, not built-environment).
Actually I’m not having much luck on ‘closest book’ stakes – again this is the second closest book. The closest, “Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing Building and Deploying Messaging Solutions” by Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf, only has four sentences on pg 56!
They were hooked on competitive depression, and a lot of what Leonard called ‘Let’s all be unhappy together.’ ‘Sunk’ was their word for feeling low. ‘Degraded’, and the associated ’sordid’, was one degree worse, connected with excesses of drink or lust.
Victoria Glendinning’s biography of Leonard Woolf
dylwah @ 51
Not that i recall. The book has been used many times from before i was born, so it’s entirely possible. Thanks for the tip in any case.
“The fragility of the ribbon microphone was well known to all who used them; some ribbons tended to sag slightly over time, and a good puff of wind could actually deform them.”
Eargle J, The Microphone Book, Second Edition, Focal Press 2004
I object in terms most strenuous to Eargle’s use of the past tense. Ribbon mics still have plenty to offer. For shame.
“Chinese Fried Liver”.
From “Bed-sitter Cook Book”, the 1964 classic by Fragoletta Lang.
I think we’ve all felt a bit like a chinese fried liver at one time or another.
“After four years at Bristol, Fuchs moved in 1937 to Edinburgh to work with Max Born, one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics and himself an emigre.”
(Sorry, I can’t be bothered with properly typesetting the accent in emigre.)
That’s from Richard Rhodes’ Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.
Along with its Pulitzer-prize-winning predecessor by the same author, (they’re effectively a continuation of the same book) it’s probably one of the definitive, gripping, extremely well written non-fiction accounts of definitive 20th century history.
Whoa, now that is freaky because I have only recently finished that book, after starting it a couple of years ago.
“The recruit took a bit of a break and got his glasses trained on them.”
The Last Love Story, Rodney Hall.
Something I found in a box of books my Mum was storing in our garage while she moved houses. An OK read, I guess, if you like that sort of thing.
“His articles were so notoriously extreme that he was automatically arrested the day after any assassination.”
‘My Last Sigh’ – Luis Bunuel’s autobiography.
Only to hand because I just dug it out for a quote on another thread.
And while hannah’s dad, you may have reservations about Holland’s ‘Rubicon’, it does has this killer sentence.
“A year later, however, when Caelius found himself particularly short of panthers, Curio thought nothing of slipping him twenty of his own.”
Makes Dallas look like a kitchen sink soap opera. The use of “particularly” is inspired writing in particular.