I saw this idea over at Mind on Fire. Basically it’s about taking an excerpt out of a near book and sharing it.

For the record, I do not know what a meme is, I do not care what a meme is, and, in fact, I dislike the word on principle alone. That being said, let us continue.

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
2. Find page 123
3. Find the first 5 sentences
4. Post the next 3 sentences
5. Tag 5 people

I am not going to do #5, because I refuse to send unsolicited message, chain-style letters to -anyone-. I thought this was interesting enough to do myself, but do not even think that I am going to attempt to perpetuate it to other people who are not interested.

I had two books on top of each other so I shall share both:

The first is The Electric Church, a book which I am borrowing and combines many favorites: a dystopian and sci-fi future, religion, and hired killers. Not a very interesting blurb.

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“Hover displacement!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Distant, but coming.”

She didn’t say anything.

The second is The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State, one of my many books dealing with the intersection of politics and religion. Much more interesting excerpt.

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The battle over Sunday mail began in the small market town of Washing, Pennsylvania, in 1809, the year Jefferson’s presidency ended. Its postmaster, Hugh Wyle, followed the widespread, though unofficial, practice of sorting the mail as well as keeping his post office open on Sundays to allow churchgoers from neighboring villages to pick up mail after church. The problem was that Wylie was also an elder in Washington’s Presbyterian church, and in 1809 the Pittsburgh synod of the church ruled that for such as egregious violation of the Sabbath Wylie was to be excluded from communion.

And because I know you are dying to see what my bedside pile of books looks like, here you are: