Courtesy of Matt Welch, this game seems to me like the blog equivalent of a chain letter.

I'm game.

Here are the instructions:

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 23.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Closest book (it's on the coffee table in front of me...or, was on the coffee table in front of me): The Conversations: Walter Murch and the art of editing film by Michael Ondaatje.

There's a thief who holds a little girl hostage in a house.

That's Murch speaking about a scene in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

If I actually count the captions beneath the photos on the page, then the fifth sentence would be

It was the first time I'd seen anything like it.

Murch again, on the freeze frame that closes The 400 Blows.

The next closest book yields

The implacable forces of history that had attacked her freedom had set her free.

That is of Irena, the main character in Milan Kundera's Ignorance.

The only other book within non-walking arm's reach is Temples of Sound, which is about legendary recording studios, the sessions, and people behind the music:

Nat "King" Cole and Frank Sinatra seemed to share a penthouse on the Billboard charts, with records constantly landing them in the top ten.

Wasn't that interesting?

Your turn.