Fuse #8

Friday, October 27, 2006

Challenge (Usually They're More Interesting Than This)

I was sitting at the Reference Desk, minding my own business, when I came across the following statement on the Chicken Spaghetti blog:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig around for that "cool" or "intellectual" book on your shelves. (I know you were thinking about it.) Just pick up whatever is closest.

I did. Here's what I found:

"I would like to know the truth about all these rumours and I am Your devoted Uncle, Aesculpaius Cultellus. Six weeks later, Gladius Ensa, the nephew, a captain of the VII Gallic Infantry, answered as follows: My dear Uncle, I have received your letter and I have obeyed your instructions. Two weeks ago our brigade was sent to Jerusalem. There have been several revolutions during the last century and there is not much left of the old city."

Dull, eh? This is a good kidlit quiz question, by the way. Can you name the book? In a way, it's the first of its kind.

4 Comments:

At 12:41 AM , Blogger Nancy said...

This was a fun one! Mine's posted over at my blog.

Got a contest running too. If you have a minute to stop by, I'd love your input.

 
At 10:28 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I got about half way thru that and just couldn't finish. Partly was how bloody long it was, tho it was short chapters. And I liked how it linked from part to part & for the most part was zipping along rather well; but that letter did me in; are we talking fact or fiction? Is this letter real or not? Where are the footnotes? Googling this links it only to this book & a few sites that seem to rely on its inclusion in this book to support the letter being real. And that bugged me so much I stopped reading.

 
At 11:41 AM , Blogger fusenumber8 said...

That's better than me. Though I actually had a kid in yesterday who was interested in checking it out. Mind you, this was the same fourth grader that also wanted a book of alphabets in different languages for fun.

 
At 1:48 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happened to be surfing through and saw this challege...
The book is "The Story of Mankind" by Hendrik Willem Van Loon, 1921; updated in 1972 by John Merriman

JR in Washington State

 

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