Mark tagged me for a meme. Pick up the near­est book, turn to page 123, and post sen­tences 5, 6, and 7.

The near­est book to my com­puter is… (get­ting tape mea­sure, as book­shelf 1 is about as close as book­shelf 2)… well, they are both within the mar­gin of error, so… I give you two books.

On my left, from Home Com­forts, The Art & Sci­ence of Keep­ing House by Cheryl Mendelson:

“Shop first for ined­i­bles, such as paper tow­els and soap. Next, pick out non­per­ish­ables: canned and bot­tled things and any­thing else that you will store out­side the refrig­er­a­tor or freezer, such as sugar, salt, dry cereal, flour, canned and room-temperature bot­tled foods. Next, buy refrig­er­ated things, such as milk, cheese, fresh meat and poul­try, and fruits and vegetables.“

On my right, from Mon­key, a folk novel of China by Wu Ch’eng-en, trans­lated by Arthur Waley:

“It was now get­ting late, and the farm-hands set out tables and brought in sev­eral dishes of cooked tiger-flesh which they laid all siz­zling in front of their mas­ter and his guest. ‘I must tell you,’ said Trip­i­taka, ‘that I was admit­ted to the Order almost as soon as I left my mother’s womb, and have never in my life indulged in meats of this kind.’ The hunter thought for a while.“

I never could stick to the direc­tions. It was a prob­lem in col­lege. I’m also not going to tag any­one, because, while I rec­og­nize that it can be fun, Mark tagged all the peo­ple I know with a blog (sad, isn’t it?) and plus, I don’t do that sort of thing. What a pisser I am.

Feel free to do this on your own blog, com­ment on my books, or post your own Page 123 entries below.

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4 Responses to Page 123

  1. mark says:

    How did you come across “Mon­key?” It sounds inter­est­ing (I already knew all the stuff in the house­keep­ing book). ;)

  2. Danny says:

    I read Mon­key for a class in com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture, in col­lege. One of the few books I kept.

    I would actu­ally like my gro­cery store to be orga­nized in such a way that I could shop as described in that book. But I have to choose either dairy or fresh fruit at one end, and work my way across the store to the other. Or I sup­pose I could go careen­ing all over the store, but that seems ter­ri­bly inefficient.

  3. mark says:

    I enter both my main gro­cery stores at the pro­duce sec­tion, then work my way across, end­ing up in frozen/dairy. Works great. Leah’s of the mind that one should, when shop­ping, go down every aisle in the store, just in case there’s some­thing there you don’t know you need. Dri­ves me BONKERS. “That,” I tell her, “is why God invented shop­ping lists.”

  4. Danny says:

    I actu­ally write the shop­ping list in the order that items appear in the store. So canned pineap­ple comes before cereal, but after broc­coli. I may have been to the store too much.

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