Bogwitch64 has tagged me with the book meme thingie. This one sounded fun, so I thought I'd give it a go. Now to choose 5 of you to tag! Oh, who will it be?

Here's how this "Nearest Book" meme works.

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 garunya's blog (your tagees will post to mine, etc.) once you've posted your three sentences.

The Five Chosen are (because I am curious what's on their desk):
- slushmaster
- sartorias
- lonfiction
- jenwrites
- benburgis

Here are my three sentences, from Beowulf by Caitlín Kiernan:

The dark blood gushes from the ragged stump, and when Beowulf kicks at it, the hand closes weakly about his ankle. He curses and shakes it loose. The arm flops about on the mead-hall floor, reminding the thanes of nothing so much as some hideous fish drawn up from the sea and battering the deck with its death throes.

She makes the story of Beowulf exciting!