Sunday, October 23, 2005

a literary meme

i was tagged by jason, who has a beautiful blog
called the clarity of night

okay, this was fun, but harder than i thought it would be! I'm afraid i didn't do a very good job.


Here are the rules, if you decide to play:

1. Take first five novels from your bookshelf.
2. Book 1 -- first sentence.
3. Book 2 -- last sentence on page 50.
4. Book 3 -- second sentence on page 100.
5. Book 4 -- next to the last sentence on page 150.
6. Book 5 -- final sentence of the book.
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph.
8. Feel free to "cheat" to make it a better paragraph.
9. Name your sources.
10.Post to your blog.


my feeble attempt:

I hated to admit, even to myself, that i was excited by the prospect of interviewing a descendent of Mary Brown, who was probably the last person exhumed as a vampire in america.

I would always get there first, check in.

NO HLP FR BLND BABS PR LL GRLS Iam glad I bit mister Astlay

Bruce and I were walking down sunset, we found a roach on the sidewalk and we smoked it.

the bare skeleton, in our culture the very symbol of the terror of death, is in other cultures evidence that the body is safe and the living are out of harm's way.

sources:

food for the dead -- michael bell
the handmaid's tale -- margaret atwood
poor things -- alasdair gray
shakey -- neil young biography
vampires, burial, and death -- paul barber

i tag:

jeff the write thing
kelly words of a writer
emom a day in the life
rob anatomy of a book deal
jer my life's not an adventure...

13 comments:

Kelly (Lynn) Parra said...

Wow, this is a new one. And going to take a bit of brain power. LOL!

Anonymous said...

Actually, I kind of liked it! Fit together in a weird way. That third sentence was tough, though. :)

anne frasier said...

it would have made more sense if smoking the roach had come before that line. :D

Bonnie Godbee said...

I did it. But just remember, I have never claimed to have any sort of abilities of any kind :)

Rob Gregory Browne said...

I may have to smoke the roach to DO this thing...

anne frasier said...

emom, your paragraph was great. :)

what i found really interesting is how page 150 had the best line in almost all of the books. the page 150 line in my paragraph was the one about the roach, but i found page 150 lines almost as good in the other books -- but of course couldn't use them.

Jerilyn Dufresne, author said...

I love it, anne. Even though you didn't tag me, I'm going to do it. But I'll have to wait until I get home. :) Jer

Jeff said...

It was challenging, but fun.
All of the paragraphs I have read so far have been good. :)

anne frasier said...

jer, i definitely thought about tagging you, but i've been reading your blog and know how busy you are!! can't wait to read your paragraph!

Jerilyn Dufresne, author said...

Thanks for being so sweet, anne. But I loved doing this, and loved how my paragraph turned out. I've heard from one of my writer friends when she discovered her book there. :)

Mary Louisa said...

Those are cool sentences but I am so lost. A card-carrying member of the blogging illiterati, I. I don't see the paragraph you made out of the five sentences. Help me understand, Anne. And this term, "meme." It makes my skin crawl. Too close to "mime." What does it MEAN?

anne frasier said...

i wasn't sure about meme either, so i swiped this from jer's blog:

Main Entry: meme
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of mimeme, from mim- (as in mimesis) + -eme
Date: 1976
: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.

Mary Louisa said...

Aaaaaah. Thank you for edifying me. Sometimes I wonder if I was dumber coming out of grad school than I was going in. Or was that pregnancy...