What’s on my nightstand
March 29, 2008 by madcarlotta
A meme.
The Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages.
Thud!” Terry Pratchett
2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 3rd sentence.
Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.
3. Post the next 5 sentences.
He had nightmares about being too late. He had a lot of nightmares about Young Sam. They involved empty cots, and darkness. It had all been too … good. In a few short years he, Sam Vimes, had gone up in the world like a balloon.
4. Tag 5 people.
Boo, Madmouse, Tah, Neo and LaMa. Well, everyone really 
A prize to the person who manages to identify the book the following is from
:
3rd sentence: “So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name.”
Next five: “People, going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all over town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed at Mr Jefferson’s the night before; and would describe how they had heard the victim’s shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of the corpse.
So they let him practice in the day-time, in the back kitchen with all the doors shut; but his more successful passages could generally be heard in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and would affect him mother almost to tears. She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been swallowed by a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea — where the connexion came in, she could not explain).
Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom of the garden, about a quarter mile from the house, and made him take his machine down there when he wanted to work it; and sometimes a visitor would come to the house who knew nothing of the matter, and they would forget to tell him about it, and caution him, and he would go out for a stroll round the garden and suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes without being prepared for it, or knowing what it was. If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.”
Now, let’s see how much the coding messed up in that. . .
Three Men in a Boat
*gives Carlotta her prize*
Here you go, your very own copy of the letter “Q”:
Q
Don’t use it all up at once!
Oh, and you should consider yourself lucky: about five minutes before I put that book down on my desk and read your blog post, the nearest book would have been either “Notes on Medical Bacteriology” or else Herodian in Greek. The latter would have been fun for me to try to work out. . .
Wow! How did you know that Q is my favourite letter? Thanks!
I only just found you’re blog over here.
Sorry.
Well thanks for telling me that you moved your blog. I have been checking your old one with no updates for a while now.
I have no books nearby but will search around the office and find some very dry engineering text no doubt.
I just moved it this weekend. Right before I made the post on MoH.
You know, the one that says:
“Hey I moved my blog, here is the new link….”
I never read that stuff, I am way too busy doing nothing.