Read Along

I am grumpy today (it feels like I start every post this way. Honestly, it's a wonder you are still here, my friends), but this time around, my mood is mostly a product of this nagging and miserable cold.

Of course, there are some other pretty heavy issues which are causing me to rend my garments and gnash my teeth, and they may or may not be solved in the near or distant future. (Ahem, vague much, Aimee?)

Since I don't feel at liberty to share much about the situation right now, I am putting the "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" rule into effect. In other words, I'm doing a meme and sublimating my feelings with Halloween candy. That's what it's there for, right?

I've seen this around my small corner of the internet, most recently at Twinfatuation, and I'm butting in because Cheryl said I could.


Rules: Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the next two to five sentences on your blog along with these instructions. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST. Tag five other people to do the same.


The book right next to me is called Time and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman. Penman writes incredibly researched and detailed historical fictions, and I enjoy reading her books. This one is about Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II, and if I ever got the time or chance to sit down during the day, I'm sure I'd be able to move on to the next book in the series.



"John, too, deplored the way unscrupulous men could plead their clergy to elude punishment for crimes against the king's peace. But when he weighed the evils, his fear that the Crown might erode Church liberties was far stronger than his reluctance to see guilty clerics escape a temporal reckoning.


Just then a commotion erupted outside, loud enough to swivel all heads toward the unshuttered windows. Two servants were hurrying up to fling open the doors. John looked baffled, but Fitz Stephen was grinning, for this was a familiar occurrence in the chancellor's household. They were about to have a royal visitor."


I think I might have gotten one of the dullest passages in the book, but rules are rules, so there you have it. The rest of the book is much more interesting and full of romance, intrigue, politics, and a dash of derring-do. Stories are always better with a little derring-do. (Isn't derring-do an awesome word? We should use it more often, even though my spell-check is freaking out at the Old English. I love to freak out the spell-check.)

I'm going to be like Cheryl and leave this open to anyone, because I am a copycat and, also, I am so congested that I can't remember who has done this already. I can't even remember if all my kids ate breakfast. It's just that kind of a morning.

I'm off to pop some Sudafed or use a neti pot or shop vac or whatever is going to help me out with these sinuses. Have a lovely day, my friends!