Showing posts with label John Steinbeck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Steinbeck. Show all posts

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Mr. John Steinbeck Everybody

So, the other day I was tagged (the blogging equivalent of an email forward for those of you, like myself, who are ignorant in the way of the blog) for the first time. I've seen some tell-us-about-yourself tags but I thought this was a cool one: find the nearest book with atleast 123 pages, find the 5th sentence and post the next three. The closest book was a dictionary so I'll spare you that. The next one was East of Eden by John Steinbeck and it is one of my all time favorite books.

"I don't want to go to California."
"You are my wife," he said softly "I want you to come with me."
She was silent and did not speak of it again.

After doing this one I'm now a little obsessed with this excercise. I keep walking over to the bookshelf to see what other books have to say on page 123. I'm finding that alot of my favorite books sound horribly boring in this context and more than one sounded incredibly vulger, though I know the books on a whole aren't. And some of the worst books I've ever read sounded like literary masterpieces, full of sage wisdom, atleast through those brief three sentences. As interesting as this all has been, just like the forwards I receive in my email, I will not be passing this on.