The dread book meme

Oh thanks, Wege. Just what I was dreaming of : being tagged with this book meme thing which is oddly omnipresent  throughout every nook and cranny (and crook and nanny) of Blogistan, despite it being one of the most boring and tedious tasks ever devised.

How to liven it up? Alas, it can’t be done. Even if I try, I’ll most likely be competing for the gentle reader’s attention against totally unfair competition, such as ….oh, probably some shameless huckster pushing The Utterly Debauched and Oftentimes Icky Adventures of Santa Wege or something. Thanks, Wege.  Thank you very, very, very, very much indeed.

For those foolish enough to be playing along at home, here are the official rules of the book meme:

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence
3. Post the text of next 3 sentences on your blog
4. Name of the book and the author
5. Tag three people

Oh brother.  How can this be made to be even slightly interesting?  Well, how about some visual aids…
Luckily (your choice of adverb may vary) I have just the thing:   In order to finish off the remaining exposures on one of those disposable cameras, I recently took a series of photos of the fabulous wonderland that is Tildebunkport.

Here we have a view of the mysteriously lovely environs of Chéz Tild…  In the center of the frame we see the quaint little glass-topped desk on wheels that holds the ancient laptop that launched a thousand photoshopped pictures (every one of them asparkle with wit and subtlety).   What’s this?  Why, by happy chance there’s a bookshelf right next to my desk! And what is on that bookshelf? Why,  who’d a thunk it? — Books!  Let’s take a closer look at them shall we?

 The stack of books on the first shelf seem to be equidistant from my desk. How to choose? Hmmm.  Okay, let’s just go completely berserk and take page 123 of three of the books, from the top, middle, and bottom of the stack:

1)
“This is the time for thinking and answering. Ask whatever you like.”
“Do you feel that you’re guilty of murdering six million Jews?” I said.
MOTHER NIGHT
Kurt Vonnegut

2)
I went up the stairs, and my mother turned to go into the bathroom, where she sat on the rim of the tub. A fleeting impression of her inability to assume an ungraceful posture sped through my mind, along with my dread of what she would say.
“You have no right to speak to Paul about George Bernard Shaw,” she said , without raising her head.
BORROWED FINERY
Paula Fox

3)
Sra. Morán recalled that her father was less strict with her younger sisters, suggesting that Americanization may have been weakening parental controls.  Federico Saucedo recalled that during his youth in the 1930s and 1940s, “regardless of everything else we had, we always had the church.   That was all there was at that time, besides the Neighborhood House… Most of us didn’t know anything over the Robert Street Bridge or the Wabasha Street Bridge.”
BARRIOS NORTENOS
St. Paul and Midwestern Mexican Communities in the Twentieth Century
Dionicio Nodin Valdes

But, not to ignore the shelf below.  Page 123 of the book closest to me on that shelf reads:

As in rural Norway, immigrant candle making constituted “an enormous undertaking,” which, says Veblen, “occupied the entire family long into the evening”: “In addition to the two or three candles that were to stand in the middle of the table for the whole family, individual Christmas candles would be dipped or molded for each of the older children. When they were all lit on Christmas Eve the whole house fairly glowed.
KEEPING CHRISTMAS
Yuletide Traditions in Norway and the New Land
Kathleen Stokker

There. Done.  Did the visual aids help at all?  No, of course they didn’t.   OK,  yeah,  I know I’m supposed to now tag 3 people to do this, but I categorically refuse.   This tedious meme must stop somewhere;  it must not go endlessly on and on, being inflicted on one hapless blogger after another with no respite in sight. 
Oh, if you really want to do it, go ahead, but I will not be the instrument of furthering this vile little timewaster.   Basta! (as we say in Andalusia).   Enough!   This madness ends with me. 

You’re welcome.