All Hail Memetics! All your memes are belong to us! Or something like that.
For great justice! Or just for fun, I have decided to finally cave and participate.
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
The first rains were late, and, when they came, lasted only a brief moment.
--from Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
Context:
The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed-yams from Nwakibie was the worst year in living memory. Nothing happened at its proper time; it was either too early or too late. It seemed as if the world had gone mad. The first rains were late, and, when they came, lasted only a brief moment. The blazing sun returned, more fierce than it had ever been known, and scorched all the green that had appeared with the rains. The earth burned like hot coals and roasted all the yams that had been sown. Like all good farmers, Okonkwo had begun to sow with the first rains. He had sown four hundred seeds when the rains dried up and the heat returned. He watched the sky all day for signs of rain clouds and lay awake all night. In the morning he went back to his farm and saw the withering tendrils. He had tried to protect them from the smoldering earth by making rings of thick sisal leaves around them. But by the end of the day the sisal rings were burned dry and gray. He changed them every day, and prayed that the rain might fall in the night. But the drought continued for eight market weeks and the yams were killed.
I love Things Fall Apart. Well-written, the book is an easy read (good line-spacing in my edition helps a lot). But it's more than a fun read. Achebe gives a lot of good insight into the colonial situations and the need for cultural understanding for foreign aid and missions workers.