Page 123 Book Meme

I was tagged by the lovely Marjie from so-marjienalized with this Page 123 Book meme. The rules are as follows:

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.

Well, like Marjie, it was hard for me to select just one, so I too have gone for a selection of three that are by my bedside. Against each of them, I have included the back cover overview, to give you a taster of what the book is about.

And here are my choices…

HUMAN TRACES by Sebastian Faulks.



In the 1870’s, two ambitious boys from different backgrounds, Jacques Rebiere and Thomas Midwinter, find themselves united by a determination to understand how the mind works and whether madness is the price we pay for being human.

As pioneering psychiatrists, their quest takes them from an English country lunatic asylum to the plains of Africa, the lecture rooms of Paris and the mountains of Austria and California. They are guided by Thomas’s devoted sister, Sonia, and by an ex-patiet, Matharina, whose arrival exposes profound differences between them. As the concerns of the old century fade ad the First World War divides Europe, the two friends are compelled to a tragic revision of all that they have loved an pursued.

Moving and challenging in equal measure, Human Traces explores the question of what kind of beings men and women really are.

The three sentences are as follows:

The lady visitor seemed a little affronted. “It seems hardly right. All those years. And then to end up. . . . Like that. . . . In here.”

THE DICE MAN by Luke Rhinehart

The rules are all around you. The rules that stop you seducing your neighbour downstairs, that stops you hitting your boss, that stops you leaving your family and leaving the country. The rules that stop you living.

The dice don’t do rules; the dice do life.

Luke Rhinehart is a psychiatrist, a husband and a father, his life locked down by routine and order – until he picks up the dice. The dice govern his every decision and each throw takes him further into a world of risk, discovery and freedom. As the cult of the dice grows around him the old order fades: chances become his religion, the dice his god.

If you haven’t lived the life of the dice, you haven’t lived at all.

Let the dice decide. And roll with it.

The three sentences are as follows:

“What the hell’s the matter with you today?” she sneered. “You’re even worse than you were last time.”
“I’m trying to show you that there’s a spiritual love far more enriching than the most perfect of physical experiences.”

SURVIVING AUSCHWITZ by Primo Levi

In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and “Italian citizen of Jewish race.” Was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz is Levi’s classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance. Remarkable for its simplicity, restraint, compassion, and even wit, Survival in Auschwitz remains a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit.

The three sentences are as follows:

Whoever does not die will suffer minute by minute, all day every day : from the morning before dawn until the distribution of the evening soup we will have to keep our muscles continuously tensed, dance from foot to foot, beat our arms under our shoulders against the cold. We will have to spend bread to acquire gloves, and lose hours of sleep to repair them when they become unstitched. As it will no longer be possible to eat in the open, we will have to eat our meals in the hut, on our feet, everyone has been assigned an area of floor as large as a hand, as it is forbidden to rest against the bunks.

So, there is a small taster of three of the great books that I have read recently. I have noticed that a few of you have already been tagged and chave completed this meme, so I won't pass this tag onto anybody specifically, instead will leave it open to all who would like to take part.

Cheerio for now,

Graham Ettridge