Thank God it wasn't Infinite Jest...

J.D. has tagged me and I duitifully respond. This time it's a gleefully pointless bookish meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Locate the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.

I say pointless, because taking three lines from the middle of a book won't necessarily yield up any great surprises, although my closest at hand, Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride, did throw up a curse.

"A neatly lettered message, relatively polite - in the States it would have been Cunt - and ordinarily Roz would have merely calculated the cost of the repair and how much time it would take to get it done, and whether it's deductible. Also, she would take out her annoyance by making a scene with the parking lot attendent. Who did this?"

This book has been sitting on the living-room shelf for a few months, after I stupidly bought it in the midst of a book buying spree at Borders. Why stupidly? Because I already own a copy of the book and have read it a few times. In the bookshop, I somehow got confused and bought it, thinking I was getting The Blind Assassin. It wasn't until I got home, cracked it open and read the first line that I went "....wait a second...". So, anybody in the market for a copy of The Robber Bride? It's good, I swear. So good, I bought it twice!