Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules edited by David Sedaris

[Don’t forget to call in with your thoughts on a Holiday Book for the Book Club Podcast! (Look to the right for details.)]

I'm little late on responding to this meme, but hey-- better late than never. (via Chicken Spaghetti)

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've had Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, a book of short stories selected and edited by David Sedaris, sitting on my desk for months. I've been reading it at a snail-like pace, but I will finish eventually. Probably. So here's what I found:

"Ten years of letters, of extravagant alcoholic phone calls. The continual measure they took of each other. Their vanished precocity, reluctantly cast aside at age twenty-five or so. Ten years which established Ted's increasingly self-conscious, increasingly offhand reports of publications, recognitions."

This is an excerpt from the short story entitled, "Applause, Applause" by Jean Thompson.

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules edited by David Sedaris

Tags: books short stories memes David Sedaris