Friday, February 29, 2008

extended book meme

I just had an idea for a slightly random extended version of the meme:

Pick the first noun in the second sentence of the passage you have produced from the first book, and use that as a search term in Google Books (use Advanced Search and check Full View to get whole books, otherwise you may not be able to see page 123). Pick the third search result, and repeat the first meme with the online book.

I tried it with mine, but the word was "parking" which produced some exceptionally dull results, so I'm going to do it with my blogger profile, which gives me the word "archaeologist".

Result: The Works of Thomas De Quincey, 1863
For surely Dr Parr, on any subject whatever barring Greek was as competent a scholar as Master Heyne. And on this particular subject, the jest is apparent, that Parr was, and Heyne was not, a schoolmaster. Parr had cultivated the art of teaching all his life; and it were hard, indeed, if labours so tedious and heavy might not avail a man to the extent of accrediting his opinion on a capital question of his own profession.
I love 18th century prose, it's so convoluted.

2 comments:

Balador said...

1863, surely that's 19th century

Yewtree said...

Durr, yes, I was thinking that Thomas de Quincey was 18th century...