Due to the Tyranny of Geometric Progression, I Won't Be Passing This Along, but I Will Play . . .

. . . if everyone followed the forward to five people rule of this meme, then you'd run out of people on the planet fairly quickly, so as usual, I am where chain letters and memes go to die (people who spread these memes, especially ones who demand they are forward to such a large number of people as five, are displaying an ignorance of exponential growth, or they are counting on the laziness of most people who won't bother forwarding the meme in question).

But, I don't mind answering the question posed (via Pastor Jeff at Conblogeration)

Now as to the rules,

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.

1. The nearest book, it's a book I've always been meaning to read, yet have never finished, it happens to be nearest to my person at this moment. I would have much preferred something more lowbrow, as this book is often cited as one of the greatest books ever written by really pretentious English major types. That book, the one every English major probably owns, but has never finished reading (including myself), that'd be James Joyces' Ulysses. My copy is a paperback Vantage Books version published in 1961. Just for fun, I checked the ISBN number of this edition (0394703804) and it shows up on Amazon, sales rank 1,099,394.

2. I'm ashamed to admit, I've never actually read all the way to page 123, so this will be virgin territory for me.

3. Found.

4.

He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citron-lemon? Ah the soap I put there. Lose it out of the pocket.

5. I don't play tag, I screencapped (see above) a quick excel sheet I did to illustrate how such a geometric progression quickly gets out of hand, by about the 12th generation you've probably used up every active blogger currently blogging, by the 13th generation you've exceeded the current population of the United States (not that the meme is limited to the USA), by the 14th generation you've exceeded the number of people who have ever used a computer (not sure on that, but I doubt more than 1 in 10 people planet wide have even limited access to computers), and buy the 15th generation you've exceeded the current population of all the people on the globe, with or without computer access. People who spread these memes forget the parable of the grains of rice and the chessboard.

(and don't those quoted sentences above just scream, "greatest work of literature, ever!")