Thursday 24 April 2008

As easy as 123

Norm at normblog has tagged me for this ... and because I've never been tagged before (I'm so easily flattered) and because my nearest book was not what I usually read but what I absolutely need (for research for my next novel) I thought I'd give it a go:

1. Pick up the nearest book
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you

Nearest book: The Edwardians: the Remaking of British Society by Paul Thompson. The sixth, seventh and eighth sentences on page 123 are:

There was the annual Sunday school outing. In summer they could go walking, and pick up apples. But for these English country children there was nothing equivalent to the storytelling, music and dancing which still flourished, as we saw in Peter Henry's story, both in family and community in the north.
I've tagged - if they want to be tagged: Stuck-in-a-Book, BooksPlease, Cornflower, A Work in Progress and Random Jottings.

3 comments:

StuckInABook said...

O-hoo!
Thank you for the tagging - will do it when inspiration becomes sluggish (always very handy to have a stockpile of these) - so should be soon!
Simon

Angela Young said...

Thank you both Simon and Karen.

When I did my MA at Middlesex, they gave us a variation on the page 69 test (see Karen's blog for more). We wannabe writers were asked to consider whether a reader reading page 100 of our books-in-progress would be hooked? And if he or she wasn't hooked (staff judged the page 100s in this case) we had to go back to the drawing board!

The habit has stayed with me and when I'm in a bookshop I'll often read page 100 before I buy a book.

StuckInABook said...

Done!