Saturday, October 22, 2005

Nearest Book Challenge

Here's a challenge (though I'm not sure why it's challenging) that Dr. Taylor posted over at Poliblog about a year and a half ago (yes, I'm reading old posts again). This is how the challenge works,
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
The nearest book is my old college Spanish textbook: "A full hug, called un abrazo (embrace), is usually reserved for special circumstances, such as after an absence; men are more likely to hug each other than women.

If I look in the books I am actually reading at the moment, I get: "It has been justly remarked that on the stage a crowd demands from the hero of the piece a degree of courage , morality, and virtue that is never to be found in real life." From The Crowd: Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon.

And "'The first of all qualities [of a general] is courage,' he read in the Memoirs Concerning the Art of War by Marshal Maurice de Saxe, on of the outstanding commanders of the era." From 1776 by David McCullough.

Anybody else what to play?

4 comments:

S said...

And where did he get this idea? :)
S.

Unknown said...

After stumbling across this blog ("next blog" button), here's mine—
"Then that which is neither good nor evil is the friend of the good because of the evil and the hateful, and for the sake of the good and the friend." From Plato's Lysis. The actual closest book is one that just has a bilbliography on page 23 (and the fifth line is a citation of personal correspondence from Kaiser Willhelm II to a hunting buddy).

Hey, is that Gustav Le Bon book any good? It's been about two years since I had a class called "Political Violence and Revolution," but we didn't look at him at all. My prof was a big fan of Latin American politics, so we got a big dose of primary sources on Sandino, etc. but not a lot of traditional theory. (I loved the class, don't get me wrong, I just really liked the topic and kinda wish that I could take it again to get another perspective on it).

Jan said...

The Le Bon book was interesting, but he didn't use imperical sources to back up his arguments. My teacher calls it peudo-science.

I know what you mean about wanting a different perspective. Last semester I had "Tradition, Revolution and Change" and this semester I have "Political Violence and Terrorism". The two classes cover a lot of the same issue, but the professors have completely different view points on the issue. It's not to get it from both angles.

BTW, I'm glad you found the blog. Come back anytime.

Unknown said...

Will do. I have you blogrolled, so that I can see when you update.
Yeah, it's always funny how profs have their own little fiefdoms too. I'm on my third class with one of my favorite profs, and while I love the level of analysis that he brings, I had missed a couple of review sessions before the midterm and he was upbraiding me over it. I just pointed out that we were reading pretty much the same works in this class as I had in my previous two with him, so I had already read and taken notes on everything that was going to be on the exam. I pointed out that one of the reasons why I chose that class over another was that I knew that I wouldn't have to buy any more books. He was a little chagrinned, but I got an A-.