Meme + Dreamers of the Day
Jan. 16th, 2009 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerfrom ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eegatland who got it from sovay
Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.
"Poor things, I thought, sweltering in their robes and veils!"
-- Mary Doria Russell, Dreamers of the Day
It's too bad I'm so scrupulously honest, as both the 4th & 6th sentences on p. 56 are much more interesting.
Actually, the whole reason this book was sitting on my desk so long after I finished it was that I was planning to type out a couple of passages for you here. Clearly, it is meant to be This passage is set in 1921; the narrator, Agnes Shanklin, a schoolteacher from Cleveland (whose sister, a missionary, was a friend of "Lawrence of Arabia"), observes some chitchat amongst British players in the Cairo Peace Conference:
"Arnold," Miss Bell was telling Colonel Wilson, "when we have made Mesopotamia a model state, there won't be an Arab in Syria or Palestine who won't want to be part of it, but they will never accept direct rule...."
"Gertrude," he countered, "You cannot simply draw a line around Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra and declare everything inside it a nation! It won't matter whom you use as the figurehead."
"Well, of course," Miss Bell said airily, "we'll have to take Kurdish sentiments into account." . . . .
"It will cost more in the long run," Colonel Wilson insisted. "What do you propose to do about the Shi'a in Karbala and Najaf? The level of religious bigotry in those regions is staggering! ...."
Miss Bell's first line comes directly from Gertrude Bell's actual writings - and I bet a lot else here does, too!
I also loved Mary's narrator ruminating on p. 137:
"Why do we travel, really? If we are of a thoughtful nature, we may wish to improve our minds, to examine the manners and customs of others . . . But is it really an education that we yearn to acquire when we travel? Or - be honest, now - do we more sincerely desire souvenirs? What tourist returns with lighter bags than those he packed at home?"
Ouch. She's got me there, dead to rights.
Well, now I can put the book away.
eegatland who got it from sovayGrab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.
"Poor things, I thought, sweltering in their robes and veils!"
-- Mary Doria Russell, Dreamers of the Day
It's too bad I'm so scrupulously honest, as both the 4th & 6th sentences on p. 56 are much more interesting.
Actually, the whole reason this book was sitting on my desk so long after I finished it was that I was planning to type out a couple of passages for you here. Clearly, it is meant to be This passage is set in 1921; the narrator, Agnes Shanklin, a schoolteacher from Cleveland (whose sister, a missionary, was a friend of "Lawrence of Arabia"), observes some chitchat amongst British players in the Cairo Peace Conference:
"Arnold," Miss Bell was telling Colonel Wilson, "when we have made Mesopotamia a model state, there won't be an Arab in Syria or Palestine who won't want to be part of it, but they will never accept direct rule...."
"Gertrude," he countered, "You cannot simply draw a line around Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra and declare everything inside it a nation! It won't matter whom you use as the figurehead."
"Well, of course," Miss Bell said airily, "we'll have to take Kurdish sentiments into account." . . . .
"It will cost more in the long run," Colonel Wilson insisted. "What do you propose to do about the Shi'a in Karbala and Najaf? The level of religious bigotry in those regions is staggering! ...."
Miss Bell's first line comes directly from Gertrude Bell's actual writings - and I bet a lot else here does, too!
I also loved Mary's narrator ruminating on p. 137:
"Why do we travel, really? If we are of a thoughtful nature, we may wish to improve our minds, to examine the manners and customs of others . . . But is it really an education that we yearn to acquire when we travel? Or - be honest, now - do we more sincerely desire souvenirs? What tourist returns with lighter bags than those he packed at home?"
Ouch. She's got me there, dead to rights.
Well, now I can put the book away.