Friday, June 20, 2008

Some news, and a tag

I have started working from home, part-time. I'm enjoying it. So If blogging becomes slow, you know what to blame!

And, as if I have extra time now, I have decided to start responding to comments again, because I feel terribly guilty for not responding to all those nice, insightful comments that I receive.

And now, since I don't have any ready posts in my kitty, I take refuge in another tag, again passed on by Shyam.

The rules of the tag are:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you.

The book nearest to me is "Baby Donald's day at the beach", which has only about ten pages, so I am going to pick up the book second closest to me, which is "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (recommended by and borrowed from Ano).

The relevant passage is:
"It was addressed to his daughter and the monogram "J.U.C." was imprinted on the seal. He slipped it under the door when he passed Fermina's bedroom, and she never understood how it had come there, since it was unconceivable to her that her father had changed so much that he would bring her a letter from a suitor. She left it on the night table, for the truth was she did not know what to do with it, and there it stayed, unopened, for several days, until one rainy afternoon when Fermina Daza dreamed that Juvenal Urbino had returned to the house to give her the tongue depressor he had used to examine her throat."

I wonder what the point of this tag is. Any ideas? :)

13 comments:

Altoid said...

What I understood of the purpose of this tag was to give people a glimpse of a book one is reading so that they'd be intrigued, enough to get it and read it themselves. I dont know, at least thats how I added some rationale to it :D

btw, I decided to take up the fictional characters tag from you, couldnt resist :).

anoop said...

I really doubt if people will be interested enough to buy a book by reading some random sentences in some random page. The purpose of this tag is to let float some random bytes into the internet world, nothing more and nothing less. And I'm contributing for the same, by commenting on it. ;)

Anonymous said...

would have made sense if paragraph was your favourite or something.

But otherwise, looks like a prank tag :D

Veena Shivanna said...

Wonder what this incomplete sentences really mean.

May be the creator of the tag wants to know whether you really have any book lying around you :-)

Hush Hush *

and Congrats on the new job!

Sudipta Chatterjee said...

The list of fictional characters was awesome! But I'd say I have just one bone to pick with Mr. Darcy and Rhett Butler -- I dislike the characters, honestly.

Anonymous said...

Maybe to interest people in the book from which the quote has been taken? :)

Anonymous said...

oo may b i missed out the part where u had said u will stop answering comments, thts why I was wondering when I saw no reply to my comments. Anywayz great tht u have decided against it, otherwise it'd have made the the blog less interactive and less fun.

M S Raghunandan said...

purpose- make one continue blogging and m,ake others post some comment as i am doing

Mana said...

Sometimes, the purpose is to guess the end of the story.

The better tag would've been to guess what the ending would be just be reading prologue, IMHO!

Shruthi said...

Altoid: Can't wait to see your tag :)
And valid explanation for the tag :)

Anoop: heh heh :D

CP: well then, I got taken in by it :)

Veena: Ha ha :D And thanks!

Sudipta: To each his own :D Would you like to do the literary char tag?

Shyam: That is the most probably answer... I thought of that too :D

Maverick: I think so too!

MS Raghunandan: I am sooo glad you started blogging!

Manasa: With just those two lines? Really? :D

Viky said...

The point is -
1. The tagger gets an acknowledgement and hence some traffic.
2. The tagger who passes this to you gets some more interesting blogs to read when you pass it to five more.
3. The book and page thing is, well, to put some flesh into the otherwise lean idea... :D

praneshachar said...

it is lime some management classes where first day after seession they ask you read some chapter and come and they will ask questions and discuss on that everyone burn night oil and come prepared and next wait anxiously when the discussion will start but no Q abut it ultimately before the close of the session someone asks sir you forgot to discuss this the faculty cooly say he has done as you have all read his objective is met.
It is nice so see you are back with reply to comments
pranesh

Anonymous said...

Some people open a random page in a book when they are down and they find answers in the first line they read. May be by asking you to give others that random sentence everyone who hits this blog with a question in mind would go with an answer. Whew! What a connection I made.!! :-)

- Raaji

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