Meme

I'm a strange combination of extremely busy and lazy right now, so I'm relying on UCF memes for posts. Normally I let memes slide by, but after reading Eric's book post, I decided that doing the book meme from my office might elicit something strange, if not humorous.

Here's the meme:

1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 -- first sentence
3. Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 -- final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph....


OK, but I have to warn you that the only non-science books I have in my office are for studying foreign languages:

Однажды весною, в час небывало жаркого заката, в Москве, на Патриарших прудах, появились два гражданина. Что, однако, резко отличает его от товарищей по работе -- это то, что на всех этапах его пути его сопровождают слухи об интригах, о нарушении дисциплины, о самоуправстве, о клевете на товарищей, даже о доносах полиции на соперников. それはどな用事でしたか。所長から聞いた。先制は何も言わずに教室を出て行かれた。

One unseasonably hot spring day, at the hour of sunset, two citizens appeared in the Park of the Patriarch's Ponds in Moscow. What, however, sharply distinguishes him from his comrades in arms - is that every step of his way is accompanied by rumors about intrigues, breach of discipline, arbitrariness, slander of his comrades, even about betrayal of his rivals to the police. On what matter was he summoned? The head of the institute had written. The teacher left the classroom without saying a word.

1. Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
2. Portraits of the Revolutionaries by Lev Trotsky
3. Office Japanese by Hajime Takamizawa
4. Japanese, the Written Language Prt 2 by Eleanor Harz Jordan and Mari Noda (spit - I hate hate hate Jordan's teaching methods)
5. Japanese verbs at a Glance by Naoko Chino

OK, I learned a couple of things. First, this kind of exercise is far easier with Japanese where the topic of conversation is set once a paragraph or so, and sentences thereafter are usually subjectless, and can be fit into all kinds of patterns when taken out of context. Second, I also learned that if you take random sentences out of my library, even if the flow is a bit broken, it sounds really, really sinister. Well, what can you expect, I study Russian, Japanese, and Chinese. That is vaguely sinister, when you think about it.