Book Meme

I was tagged with a meme by Keep the Coffee Coming.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to Mickey once you have posted it. (I couldn't find where to post the comment though)

A book that's been sitting in my "to read" pile for a very long time is The Good Times, a memoir by old school journalist Russell Baker about his life in newspapers. Page 123 happens to be the first page of Chapter 11, which deals with his boss at The Baltimore Sun, Neil H. Swanson. Here are sentences 6, 7, and 8.

Among other extraordinary claims to singularity, Swanson boasted that at the age of twenty-two he had served as a World War I army officeron detached duty with a French outfit called the chasseurs à pied.

Swanson's imperial military manner and boyish pleasure in pushing people around to show who was boss contributed to making him villain-in-chief of the Sun. On a paper that esteemed dignity, understatement, and the diffident manner, Swanson's theatrical antics and determination to make life a melodrama in which he was the star were bound to sour the atmosphere.

I tagged the eclectic pundit, Nan at Jade Page Press, and Cuidado at Cre8tive1.