Nearest Book Meme

[knockabout]

Via hangingfire .

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 42.
3. Find the first full sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Not sure if this seems more or less pretentious than hangingfire 's book, but I'm

Comments

[knockabout]

I've only just started it. I only have Ovid and Petronius to compare Apuleius to. He strikes me more of a philosopher than Petronius and dirtier than Ovid, but I can't gauge what degree of satire he's aiming for yet.

[jleavitt]

I have so many books infront of me but the NEAREST... here it goes

"In Sciences that are based on supposition and opinion ... the object is to command assent, not to master the thing itself. --Francis Bacon.

By 1977, when the notion that dietary fat causes heart disease began it's transformation from speculative hypothesis to nutritional dogma, no compelling new scientific evidense had been published. What had changed was the public attitude toward the subject. Belief in saturated fat and cholesterol as killers achieved a kind of critical mass when an anti-fat, anti-meat movement evolved independant of the science. The roots of this movement can be found in the counterculture of the 1960s and it's moral shift away from excessive consumption represented by fat-laden foods. The subject of famine in the third world was a costant presence in the news."

I love the Golden Ass. And a golden ass.

[jleavitt]

The Golden Ass' satire is more Slapstick,/absurd/sex jokes, where all strict conventions are turned upside down. Think regency play and you're halfway there, although there is more religious sentiment in the Golden Ass while still mocking it.

[pitchy]

From Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The evils of the church that now is are manifest. The question returns, What shall we do? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by the French to the goddess of Reason, - to-day, pasteboard and fillagree, and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For, if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new.

late in the game but here goes

[glubose]

From Rocks and Minerals and the Stories They Tell by Robert Irving:

"But there are easy ways of telling quartz and feldspar apart. First, they don't have the same luster or shine. Quartz is glassy, while feldspar shines more like a piece of china. Secondly, when you break them, feldspar splits along cleavage planes, while quartz does not. Finally, although feldspar is one of the harder minerals, it is not so hard as quartz. You can't scratch either feldspar or quartz with a knife. But while quartz easily scratches glass, feldspar will make only faint scratches even when you press hard."