I’ve been meme’d. The rules:
1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing…
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.
While killing time in an airport bookstore last month, I picked up a new edition of Lolita and settled on a fun little project: This year I’m going to reread a few of the books that inspired me to become an English major way back when. I’m curious to see, fifteen years later, how my sense of the novels has evolved. So far, Nabokov is more impressive and Humbert is more disturbing than I remembered. Case in point:
“Oh, I’ve been such a disgusting girl,” she went on, shaking her hair, removing with slow fingers a velvet ribbon. “Lemme tell you–”
“Tomorrow, Lo. Go to bed, go to bed — for goodness sake, to bed.”
I pocketed the key and walked downstairs.
I cheated by including a bit more than three sentences, but it seemed unfair to omit the final detail — Humbert pocketing the key and taking leave while waiting for the sleeping pill he had just fed to Lolita to work its charm.