A Reading Meme: I've Been Tagged!

Nancy, a reader and fellow wine-blogger who also blogs about books at her blog Vellum, tagged me for a book meme (one of those blogging equivalents of a pyramid scheme without any money).

The rules were these:

Pick up the nearest book.
Turn to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people with this game, and acknowledge the person who tagged you.

Nancy thought I might be reading a wine book, but the book closest to me was Neal Stephenson's mammoth tome, Quicksilver, a historical novel about the Scientific Revolution. It's part of a trilogy, and I've been trying to get through it for years. This summer, I have vowed to stop trying and actually DO IT.

Here's a taste of the book, following the instructions above:

"The ass taught me nothing," Hooke said. "Anyone who is not a half-wit can learn all there is to know of painting, by standing in front of paintings and looking at them. What was the use, then, of being an apprentice?"

On the facing page from this exchange is a very reduced picture of Robert Hooke's famous drawing of a flea, which he saw under a microscope. It was the blockbuster-equivalent of Indiana Jones or Independence Day for his 17th-century audience, a frightening alien creature that looked like it could wiggle right off the page and create havoc in downtown London--which of course, it already was.

I don't have much else to report about this book, as of yet, but it's now my duty to tag five other people, so I'm picking some wine bloggers who I know are avid readers, as well as some members of the Shelfari Wine Book Club. They are: Richard, a Passionate Foodie; Deb, from Deb's Key West Wine and Gardening Blog; Our Girl, from As the Vineyard Grows; Jill B. from Domaine547; and Monkuwino from One Wine Per Week. Who knows, maybe one of them will even be reading a book about wine!