A meme with a difference

Via Thanks for not being a zombie, from word’s end:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

So, the book next to me is Garthine Walker, Crime, gender and social order in early modern England (Cambridge, 2003).

“Other manslaughters which were aggravated by the nature of the assaults similarly resulted in a death sentence being passed by the judge: one dark evening, Raphe Lingard used such force that his dagger was embedded in six inches of his victim’s flesh; Robert Wade inflicted mortal wounds on Thomas Baker’s belly and testicles at one o’clock on an October morning.”

Not everything I read is this gruesome, you know. Honest.

7 comments on “A meme with a difference”

  1. detrimental postulation » dedicated follower of fashion says:

    [...] dedicated follower of fashion
    I’m with… everything — Rob @ 7.55 pm

    Everyone’s doing it, so why the hell not? Slow ne [...]

    16th December 2004 at 7:55 pm
  2. Chris Williams says:

    Gah. I was hoping for similar gore and grue, but alas I picked up Harris before Mayhew or Stalker.

    ‘Since a major trend in City polcing after 1815 was the continuing expansion of the Day and Night Patroles, one might ask why aldermen chose again and again to augment a relatively recent institution when they could have increased the authority, numbers, or responsibilities of the marshals and marshalmen.’

    Interesting to me, you, and possibly about 200 other people on the planet, but it’s hardly the execution of the regicide Damien, is it?

    Mayhew on the other hand: ‘The sale of sheep’s trotters, as a regular street-trade, is confined to London, Liverpool, Newcasle-on-Tyne, and a few more of our greater towns.’ How true.

    16th December 2004 at 1:45 pm
  3. Sharon says:

    Well, if I’d done it last night when Beattie’s Policing and Punishment was on the top of the pile, I’d have got this: “The mayor’s proclamation reminded them [constables] to make themselves known by mounting their staffs at their street doors, and ordered them to remain at home as much as possible ‘or leave other fit and able persons to perform their Office in their Absence’.” Thrilling stuff.

    16th December 2004 at 3:07 pm
  4. Jonathan Dresner says:

    I’m at work (not that it matters much, my home computer is surrounded by textbooks, too) and the nearest book is the Stearns, et al. World History Documents collection. Page 123 is Roman historian Josephus on the display of prizes in the Triumphal march at the end of the Jewish War and sacking of the Second Temple:

    The men also who brought every one of these shows were great multitudes, and adorned with purple garments, all over interwoven with gold; those that were chosen for carrying these pompous shows having also about them such magnificent ornaments as were both extraordinary and surprising.

    16th December 2004 at 9:34 pm
  5. Sharon says:

    That has a certain something. (Does it elaborate on what was ‘extraordinary and surprising’ about them?)

    16th December 2004 at 10:21 pm
  6. sepoy says:

    First book near me is The Adventures of TinTin: Cigars of the Pharoah. p 123, sen. 5:

    TinTin: The fakir! He’s given us the slip again!

    indeed.

    16th December 2004 at 10:37 pm
  7. Sharon says:

    Love it. :)

    17th December 2004 at 12:00 am