Closest Book Meme

[gerisullivan]

Instructions:
* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favourite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

A friend posted that Llama Llama Mad at Mama was her closest book and while the pages aren't numbered, there are fewer than 56 of them. "The end."

My closest book has 142 pages, but no sentences past the front matter that ends on page 6. Page 56 of the Graphic Design Cookbook has a dozen blocks showing interesting page number elements. It's the first of 3 such pages. Each one uses "17" as the page number (hi, skzb!) and the only copy in the fifth block is greeked the same as the other 11:

"or sit amet, cons
tetur sadipsing e
litr, sed diam no
nermod tempori
nvidunt ut labore
et dolore magna"

Now that I've typed that, I realize I am mistaken. I have a dictionary that's closer -- it was just out of sight behind the door in my desk when I looked in a circle around me for the closest book. It doesn't have sentences on page 56, either, but the 1979 edition of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style that was directly underneath it does:

"(The American Heritage Dictionary gives ten.) The people is a political term, not to be confused with the public. From the people comes political support or opposition; from the public comes artistic appreciation or commercial patronage.

"The word people is best not used with the words of number, in place of persons. If of "six people" five went away, how many people would be left? Answer: one people.

"Personalize. A pretentious word, often carrying bad advice."

Hey, timely, even. "From the people comes political support or opposition...." Indeed.