so this morning kevin tagged me.
it’s this game someone started to give bloggers something to talk about while also potentially drawing in new readers in a chain letter type fashion.

interesting idea.

anyway, here are the rules:

1. Find the nearest book.
2. Name the book and author.
3. Turn to page 123.
4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
5. Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
6. Tag three more folks.

the first thing that’s funny about this is that, when kevin first tagged me, in a comment on my last post about french toast, i followed the link he left to the post he had written to explain the game and it wasn’t there. BlogSchmog loaded properly and talked to me about fantasy sports, and when i clicked on the specific post it said it was post 674. kevin’s link referred to post 675, but when i tried to go there, it just didn’t exist.

so that was weird.

for better or worse, though, i couldn’t think about it much because my internet was dying (common story lately), so i forgot about it for a while, and then when i came back here and checked planet info, the post was there safe and sound.

shrug

maybe america wants a head start to keep up with the time zone difference, so it doesn’t let britain see its posts until later in the day and i’ve just never noticed before…

or maybe not.

anyway the other funny thing is that i dutifully went in search of the nearest book, promising myself that i really would pick whichever one was closest because that seems to make the game more fun, and because otherwise i would spend way too long deciding because it just so happens that yesterday i bought four used books to occupy myself and i am quite excited about them.

so, my resolve steeled, i entered my room, and this is what greeted me:

i think the book on the left wins the race by a nose, but since it’s so close, and i happen to be reading both of them at the moment anyway, i’m going to play the game with them both, so here you go:

Speak for England
by James Hawes

— I told you, I don’t know anything. I’m very sorry.
— Well then, what ruddy regiment are you?

Maps for Lost Lovers
by Nadeem Aslam

But the diagrams were the only sketching he could do without furtiveness and guilt at home.
Everyone at home was, of course, aware of his talent. Kaukab sometimes brought him a bar of perfumed soap so he could sketch the vignette indented at its centre for her to embroider it in rows on her own or Mah-Jabin’s kameezes.

the differences in length and tone between the two books’ sentences is rather telling. they are quite different, and it’s really rather interesting to read them alongside one another. i’m doing it because i couldn’t decide whether i was in the mood for funny or serious, so i started them both, and have just been skipping back and forth because it is actually kind of fun.

i have found, over the years, that it is good for me to read more than one book at a time because that way i have something to read no matter what mood i’m in, and i am less likely to get into a funk wherein i stop reading altogether just because my momentum on one specific book gets stalled for whatever reason. i think this developed when i started reading more nonfiction for fun, because even very dense subject matter is made more accessible by interspersing harry potter between the chapters, but it really carries over into all genres once you get going.

this time both the books are about England, but in very different ways, so it’s actually kind of thought-provoking to intersperse them.

Speak for England is a comedy about a disenchanted desperate middle-aged Englishman who enlists in a crazy reality show to go try and live in the jungle for six weeks, almost dies, and accidentally stumbles upon a hidden colony of survivors from a 50’s plane crash who all live very chipper English lives under the leadership of a headmaster who thinks the new arrival is lying when he tells them that there was no WWIII, and what’s more now there is a Labour prime minister who doesn’t like unions and is capping taxes.

Maps for Lost Lovers is, well, i guess it’s a drama, but it’s really just a novel that’s not specifically comic, about Pakistani immigrants who are struggling to keep hold of their heritage in their new country. It tells the story of a year in the lives of the people connected to a pair of lovers who are missing and presumed killed because they brought dishonor on the woman’s family by living together outside of marriage.

flipping back and forth between them is jarring, but the sarcastic yet still proud points about the honor and idealism of the English spirit stand out in sharp relief against the nuanced and often tragic stories of people struggling to find a home and come to terms with their evolving heritage in a land that generally shuns them, and i think it’s good food for thought on both sides for someone taking some time to get to know the uk.

but then again, i might just be nostalgic for a book i read while tania and i were on our road trip that was easily one of the best books i have read in a long time, and which was all about juxtaposing seemingly unrelated stories in pursuit of a higher theme. that book is called cloud atlas, and i would quote you from page 123 just for fun except i don’t have it anymore because i left it in a hostel somewhere for someone else to find, since that is what you do when you travel.

so there you go, kevin.
you got me to babble about what i’m reading, which is actually quite an accomplishment, as the empty posts on my reading list show.
so good work.
:)

i tag david, lucy, and josh (of the family snyder).

i’m betting that lucy will tag back to the planet from her exploratory post on the informatics moon, and that she will have something interesting to share with us on the rebound. :)

if i’m wrong, though, then i’m agonna cheat and tag either matt eisenstadt or will, because half representation from team meeteetse is just not satisfactory, my friends. you both said you would blog more, and instead you’re just sitting back and letting erik and i talk about food all the time and i think we need you to come in and shake us up with some video games or lawyer jokes or perhaps a dash of foucault. ;)

so i guess i’m really playing two games, and if you don’t find safety in a post by the time i count to 100, then i’ll come find you and give chase until ollie ollie oxen free.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 8:51 pm and is filed under on blogging, things i do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.