Double Your Meme, Double Your Fun!
Both Maya’s Granny and La Belette Rouge tagged une femme for this meme, so I’m going to do it twice!
Here are the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first 5 sentences and read them.
4. Post the next 3 sentences.
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first 5 sentences and read them.
4. Post the next 3 sentences.
Rather than grab the nearest book to the computer at the moment, which was the Consumer Reports 2008 Buying Guide, I thought it might be fun to compare two books written almost 44 years apart, but covering the same topic and similar in format. The first is A Guide to Elegance: For Every Woman Who Wants to Be Well and Properly Dressed on All Occasions by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux. Originally published in 1964, and arranged alphabetically by topic, the book is an entertaining mishmash of quaintly anachronistic and timeless sartorial advice.
Under the topic, “Occasions,” page 123:
“Black is not the ideal colour for more or less ceremonious late-day and formal evening functions; it is, in fact, prohibited by Court protocol. But nothing better has even been invented for the smart little dinner dress, without sleeves and somewhat décolleté, that is perfect to wear when the men are in dark business suits rather than black tie. A chic black dress of this type is an indispensable part of every woman’s wardrobe, and it is ideal for all of those business dinners when your husband wishes to proudly introduce to his boss, colleagues, or customers, a wife whose good taste is as remarkable as her elegance.”
See what I mean?
For my second selection, I chose The Meaning of Sunglasses: And a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable by Hadley Freeman. Like “Elegance,” the book is about style and is arranged alphabetically by topic. There the similarities end, though “Sunglasses” is clever and contemporary, also an entertaining read.
Under the topic, “Jeans: not as bulletproof as they tell you” page 123:
“And so manufacturers, understandably, decided to milk this cash cow for all it was worth, experimenting with every possible style, design and color variation they could possibly imagine in order to convince customers to buy more, more, MORE! Thus, what was once an easy basic became a fraught style statement with its own internal fashion trends.
The style that originally reeled in the masses was the bootcut hipster.”
If you’d like to carry this meme forward, consider yourself tagged.
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“You did what?”
Dad’s nostrils flared; he lowered his head and pawed at the caked dirt. I dove into the wagon and slid beneath the blankets with my sisters.
From St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves a collection of stories by Karen Russell
(Hi, Pseu! It’s OO-Stacie!)
Stacie!!! Hi!!! (waving) Love the bit you posted, am going to have to find that book!
tessa – I love it too. Every few months I pick it up and open it randomly and start reading.
LBR – I should have known you’d know “Guide to Elegance!” The second book is fun, and appropriately irreverant when it comes to Fashion.
First of all, “Elegance” is one of my favorite books of all time. I go back to it again and again for inspiration. Although I have to admit when it instructed to wear no jewelry to funerals, I had to ignore the advice and wear my little onyx drop earrings.
p.s. I also loved “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls…” in the previous comment.
Thanks so much for playing!!! I love how you doubled the meme. I have read and enjoyed “A Guide to Elegance.” I haven’t read the second book.I love the title. Sounds like a great book. I am ordering it. Thanks, DP!!!
DejaPseu: What a great meme! And I think I best play it here.
From ‘The Tiger That Isn’t’ by Blastland and Dilnot:
“It is bad, in essence, because we make it so. To see why data collection is so prone to misbehave, take an example of a trivial glitch in the system, brought to us by Professor David Hand of Imperial College London. An email survey of hospital doctors found that an infeasible number of them were born on 11 November 1911.”
Admittedly not a patch on your two lovely quoted passages, but those are going on my to-read list. 🙂