the "what are you reading?" meme

Well, aren’t I lucky? I got tagged by Pirate Dog PDX for this. Fortunately, it’s not one of those long things that takes six hours to type where I have to tell my favorite flavor of ice cream and all sorts of other stuff that you don’t really care about.

I have to admit that I didn’t even realize the tag at first. It’s only 8:30 p.m. and I was just about dozing over the keyboard. I didn’t get to sleep until around 2:30 this morning—long story that you may or may not hear about in another post. And when I read the names of tagged bloggers, I said, “whuh….? Oh, wait, that’s me.”

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Here’s where I get to appear really brainy. I’m reading The Archimedes Codex by Reviel Netz and William Noel which tells the story of the Archimedes Palimpsest I talked about in this post.

"Once the codex was in pieces, the bifolios were scrubbed with some kind of natural acid. There are no Greek texts telling us how this was done, but Theophilus, writing On Various Arts in Western Europe in the twelfth century, suggests that by using orange juice and a sponge it is quite easy to erase the letters perfectly. There is no doubt that some kind of acidic mixture was used, but the operation on the Palimpsest was much more severe than the one prescribed by Theophilus."

There. Aren’t you just dying to find out the rest? You’ll just have to buy the book and read it for yourself. Please do so, and support the authors and this wonderful project.  And you know what?  So far it's very interesting and a fairly easy read.

And now I get to tag five people.  I'd love to know what kind of books they're reading.  Of course, I just realized that I may tag them here (because I read their blogs), but how do I know they read mine?  I guess I don't, do I?  At any rate, let's hear from Nowhere, IL, Complainaway, Going Like Sixty, Amputeehee, and Keeping You in Stitches.

 

Comments

[Shawanda]

You have earned yourself a big ol' bowl of gorgonzola ice cream ... with the red wine poached pears and polenta biscotti.

And, lord yes. BRAINY!