Here's a new book meme. Starting at the top left of your first bookcase, count off your books from left to right until you find the twenty-eighth book. Turn to page twenty-eight and copy the first full paragraph you find on that page. What book is it? Have you read it? Did you like it?

Why the number twenty-eight? i don't know; i had to pick a number and today is January 28th. Besides, if you don't have at least twenty-eight books in your home, the books you do own are probably not very interesting anyway.

Here's mine:

Now to invent something touching the more private career of Claggart, something involving Billy Budd, of which something the latter should be wholly ignorant, some romantic incident implying that Claggart's knowledge of the young bluejacket began at some period anterior to catching sight of him on board the sevety-four--all this, not so difficult to do, might avail in a way more or less interesting to account for whatever of enigma may appear to lurk in the case. But in fact there was nothing of the sort. And yet the cause necessarily to be assumed as the sole one assignable is in its very realism as much charged with that prime element of Radcliffian romance, the mysterious, as any that the ingenuity of the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho could devise. For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be, if not called forth by this very harmlessness itself?

Posted by: annika at 06:22 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 339 words, total size 2 kb.