Everyone seems to be doing this, so I decided to have a go.

 

1. Grab the nearest book. If you are currently reading something, that'll be fine too.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your Blog along with these instructions.

5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet I know that is what you were thinking!

6. Tag 5 people

Well I won't bother to tag five people - as I say above do this if you like and leave your link in the comments below.

So here is the book I grabbed, The Black Country by Edward Chitham.

 

He prided himself on being a plain speaking man; he intended when he went up to Westminster to reform the church, make the Bank of Englandthe servant, not the master of the people and curb the power of the "selfish obligarchy of the landlords who ruled the country with a rod of iron and made the agricultrual districts one vast truck shop."Despite these proud and hearty words Mr Fryer sat in one Parliament only, thereafter retiring tho his country seat at The Wergs, his coat of arms duly granted him i 1825.

 

By the mid-nineteenth century the Black Country had earned its name, though no one knows who first christened it. Dickens, writing in the Old Curiosity Shop in 1841, called it a Black Region "where not a blade of grass was seen to grow, where not a bud put forth its promise in the spring., where nothing green could live  but on the surface of a  stagnant pool. Dickens was of course a specialist in the  Macabre and on his visits here he must have been pleased to store up visual memories, whic he could refashion  into descriptions for his novels.