Book meme

I picked this one up from Comrade Kevin and DCup today because after a too-long hiatus, I'm back to reading their blogs (which I suggest you do too, if you don't already). I'm tagging myself with this one as I figured no one else would since I've been out of the loop for so long. So, here it goes:

(1) Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
(2) Find Page 123. Find the first 5 sentences and read them.
(3) Post the next 3 sentences.
(4) Tag 5 people.

Well, since no one tagged me, I'm not going to tag anyone else. If you want to do it, I say go for it on your own volition. It's fun. The first book I grabbed was Beyond the Tanabata Bridge, Traditional Japanese Textiles. It lives either next to my bed or at my desk, depending on where I'm sitting at the time. Page 123 has a color plate of a fireman's jacket, a fantastic example of craftsmanship.





"Commoner's firefighting coat (hikeshi banten), Late Edo-early Meiji period, mid-19th century. Quilted (sashiko) cotton coth with freehand paste-resist decoration (tsutsugaki)." --yes, I do actually read this stuff for fun.

But I figured the point of the meme was to find something with actual words, so I picked up Heaven's Net is Wide by Lian Hearn (an interesting fictional tale about feudal Japan, but Shogun it ain't) and found this lovely passage:

"In the distance, a lone figure was stumbling across the plain. It fell repeatedly, struggled to its feet, sometimes crawled on hands and knees. As it came closer, they could hear its voice, a thin anguished howling that now and then quietened to sobbing only to rise again in a note that made horror touch the spines of the watching men."

Think men with really sharp swords and no centralized government to tell them, hey, leave those peasants alone! Yeah, feudal Japan, where samurai were armed and peasants occasionally got slaughtered.

Okay, your turn. Go!