{"id":2390,"date":"2008-12-14T14:27:21","date_gmt":"2008-12-14T19:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=2390"},"modified":"2008-12-14T14:33:39","modified_gmt":"2008-12-14T19:33:39","slug":"bookwormed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/bookwormed\/","title":{"rendered":"Bookwormed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ron<\/a>Seems I have been “bookworm tagged” by Julie Weathers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Bookworm Award” rules:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Open the closest book — not a favorite or most intellectual book — but the book closest at the moment, to page 56<\/li>\n
  2. Write out the fifth sentence, as well as two to five sentences following<\/li>\n
  3. Tag five innocents [or more]<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    With the assumption that “book” means “published<\/em> book, not your own manuscript, Mr. or Ms. Writer,” followed immediately by the thought that it would be interesting, in fact, to apply to writing friends’ manuscripts, Julie has added another step:<\/p>\n

    4.\u00a0 Repeat steps 2 and 3 for your own manuscript.<\/p>\n

    So, umm… okay.<\/p>\n

    I’m going to disregard tech-reference books, which are stacked over and around my computer. The closest other book I can put my hands on without getting up and looking around is a well-thumbed 1967 paperback edition of Catch-22<\/em>, which is still on my desk from when I reviewed<\/a> it for MoonRat’s “celebrate reading<\/a>” series<\/a> back in June.<\/p>\n

    In this passage, the protagonist, Yossarian, is talking with his friend Hungry Joe about nightmares. Hungry Joe is speaking sentence #5 on page 56, and the conversation continues:<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    “Everybody has nightmares.”<\/p>\n

    Yossarian thought he had him. “Every night?” he asked.<\/p>\n

    “Why not every night?” Hungry Joe demanded.<\/p>\n

    Suddenly it all made sense. Why not<\/em> every night, indeed?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    As for my own manuscript, I’ve got different drafts of two different books at hand. The one on top just happens to be the first draft (from 1992ish) of the manuscript with the working title Grail<\/em>. This passage is in the first-person voice; the narrator here is one Al Castle:<\/p>\n

    I was still standing there facing the truck, looking down at my ruined clothes and trying to decide if I needed to go back to the office at all, when the door behind me creaked and a rough, gravelly voice said something like, “How’d you like it I dump a load of cans on that Rambler, buddy?”<\/p>\n

    I turned around, all hot-headed — no, seriously, I was really annoyed<\/em> — prepared to give the fellow a good dressing-down, who’d he think he was, why didn’t he answer the door sooner, so on, but when I saw him I couldn’t say a word. Stopped me in my tracks.<\/p>\n

    He was wearing heavy grey work clothes, the long sleeves rolled up on his forearms, and he had this full-length rubberized sort of apron on over his clothes, with stains and burn-holes here and there. I remember what he was wearing because I never saw him wearing anything else. But regardless what he was wearing, it wouldn’t be what I’d remember about the way he looked, no sir.<\/p>\n

    What I’d remember and what stopped me in my smart-ass young tracks, sorry Bonnie, was his head.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    I’m vaguely familiar with the notion of tagging as applied to blogging — one person starts it off with a topic or gimmick for a blog post, and then passes the idea to N (however many) other bloggers, who do the same thing, and so on. Sort of a chain letter, or one of those 20-questions quizzes which get passed around among emailers, each person erasing the previous person’s answers and supplying his or her own answers.<\/p>\n

    But I’m afraid I’m shamefully old-school about such things. Personally love the idea of my having a “free” topic to post on; but personally don’t like to single out other individuals and do the same to them. This is the first time I’ve been specifically tagged, which has enabled me to duck the issue for now.<\/p>\n

    So this is just an implicit tag, with its own context of, um, passivity I guess: You, reading this, consider yourself tagged with this Bookworm Tag thing.<\/strong> I’ll never know who you are. Maybe there will be 20 of you, maybe only one or two (or none). If you decide to accept the tag<\/em>, and follow the above rules yourself, let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n

    Got that?<\/p>\n

    Good.<\/p>\n

    Go<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Seems I have been “bookworm tagged” by Julie Weathers. “Bookworm Award” rules: Open the closest book — not a favorite or most intellectual book — but the book closest at the moment, to page 56 Write out the fifth sentence, as well as two to five sentences following Tag five innocents [or more] With the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37,5,36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-onlineworld","7":"category-06_writing","8":"category-reading","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-Cy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2390"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2396,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions\/2396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}