The Nearest Book

B. has memed me.
I'm excited about this one.
Let me see...the closest book is *drumroll*....The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice

As always, there are rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Skip to the 5th sentence.
4. Post the next 3 sentences.
5. Tag 5 other people.

Well, here goes...
"I scanned the crowd around for the source of this strange distraction, what was it, not Nicolas in the door of the deserted theater, watching me with a broken soul.
No, something else both familiar and unfamiliar, having to do with the dark.
'Hire the finest mummers'--I was half babbling--'the best musicians, the great scene painters.'"

I really like this Meme. May I do another? Please? Yes, I think I shall. Rules are meant to be broken.

The next closest is...Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Unfortunately, this particular edition lacks a one-hundred-and-twenty-third page. So I'll have to go on to the next closest, which happens to be The Mammoth Book of Pirates, edited by Jon E. Lewis and containing retellings by historians as well as firsthand accounts of piracy. On page 123 is "Journal of A Buccaneer", by William Dampier. Interestingly, if page 123 had fallen just three pages further into the book, the passage excerpted would have come from "Avery's Prize"(about Henry Avery's capture of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb's ship, the Gang-I-Sawai), by pirate historian Charles Ellms. Ah, well. Such is life.

"There were a great many fat Bulls and Cows feeding in the Savannahs. Some of us would have killed three or four to carry on board, but others opposed it, and said it was better to stay all Night, and in the Morning drive the Cattle into the Pen, and then kill 20 or 30, or as many as we pleased. I was minded to return aboard, and endevoured to persuade them all to go with me, but some would not."

Huh. How...gruesome. (She said, as though pirates did not habitually engage in killing.)

Suddenly referring to herself in the third person...



PS: Avery cannot think of anybody to tag. And for that she is sorry.