Fine, I'll do this, but I'm not tagging nobody. :P

[nendil]

Tagged by boggyb:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people.

The closest book that's not Kevin's calculus book:

---

"I am the less surprised at what has happened," replied Sir William, "for her superior mastery of the deadly arts and high breeding are known throughout the courts of Europe."

Scarcely anything was talked of the whole day or next morning but their visit to Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing them in what they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms, so many servants, a personal guard of five-and-twenty ninjas, and so splendid a dinner, might not wholly overpower them.

When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to Elizabeth:

---

(OMG WHAT DID HE SAY!!)

From Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I have yet to actually read through because despite zombies and ninjas, it does a good job of reminding me why I never made it past a few pages of Pride and Prejudice in the first place. Did yield a pretty kick-ass excerpt though :D

Comments

[erichowens.livejournal.com]

You have to wonder how that affects the stylings of the surrounding scholarship. For languages prone to either "run-on sentences" (whatever that might mean in the original language) or just have a sparser density of meaning-per-phoneme/less informational entropy, I wonder if the academics who immerse themselves in these writings end up internalizing (and later using) the properties of what they read.

Not that academics in general are known for their concision or pith, I guess.

[nendil.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that it's just generally true that people tend to start writing with the style(s) that they're exposed to. I know that I write better prose when I've been reading better prose. :)