Just Take a Look, It's in a Book... [A Reading Rainbow]

The ever vibrant Queen Gilda tagged me in a rare meme, and who am I to say no to such a lovely gal? It helps that I'm in the middle of several great books, so it's another chance to share those as well!

1. pick up nearest book
2. open to page 123
3. find the 5th sentence
4. post the next 3 sentences
5. tag 5 people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Ian McEwan's Atonement:
Briefly, he closed his eyes. A two-pint jug of custard was placed beside him, and he wondered if he had the strength to lift it.
"I'm sorry, Emily. But she has been quite over the top all day long."
(Admittedly, it's taken me a while to get in to Atonement, mostly because I was so disappointed with the film. However, the book takes care of my main problem with the film, which was I felt that I was missing out on a story. The film is so very pretty and very well shot, but I couldn't help feeling like I had been missing something. There was this feeling that there was a story I wasn't a part of, that I was missing out of it, and my suspicions were right! There is so much more depth to this novel than the film would make you believe.)



Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies:
(The offending passages are omitted from his collected reviews.) Actually, that John Ford film was one of her more appealling and forthright vehicles, her Lolita-ish. Generally, her fliratiousness with her daddy figures was outdone, in precociousness, only by the patronizing way in which she treated contemporaries.
(This particular chapter in on women in the 1930s, and this passage talks about Shirley Temple, who is "one of the great vessels of virgin worship in this period." While I am not far in this book, I recommend it if you have an interest in women's studies, film theory, or film history.)




Mineko Iwasaki's Geisha: A Life:
"My what?"
"Your period. You are menstruating. It's perfectly normal. Didn't you learn about this at school?"
"They told us something. But that was a long time ago."
(I picked this up when I spotted it at the bookstore; for a few years I have been interested in the art of geisha, and thought this would be a nice, more autobiographical rendition of the beauty of Memoirs of a Geisha. It has exceeded my expectations; I love the casual, unimposing writing style, her candor for details, and the sense of interest the book creates. While I'm only a quarter in to it, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about geisha.)



Tag Time! (I don't doubt you ladies have great books by your bedside)
♥ Miss Meg
♥ Chic & Charming
♥ (Into) The Fray
♥ Miss Kori
♥ & you! Please leave me comments with your books, their passages & prose.