Here's what you have to do ..

Grab the nearest book .. not the most intellectual or classical or coolest .. just the nearest.

Go to page 61 and tell us what the fifth sentence is.

Easy.

Here's mine from Spike Miligan: Milligan's War.

"Keep talking, Milligan, I think I can get you out on Mental Grounds" siad Lt Budden.

Here's mine from "The Annotated Hobbit"

"Great elephants!" said Gandalf, "you are not at all yourself this morning-you have never dusted the mantelpiece!"

"In later life Dottie had a dog called Woodrow Wilson."

(The Uncollected Dorothy Parker, edited by Stuart Y. Silverstein)

From "Naked", by David Sedaris

"Downstairs the obese detective would collect his breath on the bow of the drug lord's pleasure craft while up in the kitchen his elderly colleague hurled himself over a low brick wall in pursuit of the baby-faced serial killer."

Huh? I haven't read the book yet ... so carry no idea what that's all about ...

"Though the effects on the boat were generally not as bad as the appearance of the water sometimes led us to expect, there would be moments when everything felt out of control, as in a skidding car."

Slow Travel by Mari Rhydwen

From "The Story of Canada" - kid's history textbook from 1950 -

"The missionaries leaned how to live among the Indians and share their rough food and crowded, smokey dwellings."

From "The Old Curiosity Shop" by Charles Dickens:
"It consisted of a brown body-coat with a great many brass buttons up the front and only one behind, a bright check neckerchief, a plaid waitcoat, soiled white trousers, and a very limp hat, worn with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in the brim,."

Strange, but my nearest is 'Illusions - The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah' by Richard Bach which always sits by my computer, and where I took my *signature* on here from. Even stranger, for some reason I cannot remember, out of numerous ones, I had page 61 bookmarked.
Now, the strangest part yet, here is the 5th line:
"No," he said. "You just open it and whatever you need most is there."

Okay, that is my *chill up the spine* moment for the day...

John O'Farrell - 'An Utterly Impartial History of Britain' and sadly it's not one of the sentences which has had me laughing out loud.
"But Alfred had a favourite grandson, and gave the little blond boy a great Saxon sword and belt and royal cloak before he died."

The book is highly recommended though - especially for anyone who enjoyed '1066 and all that'.

Well, my poetry shelf is nearest.

War Music Christopher Logue

Sun fade, sea breathing.

It's a retelling of Homer's Illiad in verse.

"Just After Sunset", by Stephen King

"He tried to scramble to his feet, but more ice cubes went zipping out from beneath him and he thumped down again."

I was just discharged from hospital, so please cut me some slack. I was not up for continuing my biography of Justinian from my hospital bed

I was wondering who would be honest enough to post something that wasn't a 'classic' or an erudite tome!
For the record, my computer is in the front room. My sci fi and fantasy are upstairs on the bedroom bookcase, along with detective fiction.

Hmmm - my "old books" bookshelf is nearest, with the cookbooks next closest (I know that its grammatically incorrect, but can't figure out how to word it properly). I did notice, after posting, that my purse was closer yet, and since I am spending the weekend doing my Red Cross update, I have the manual in there. So -

"Develop safe play habits to prevent injury, such as not running with sharp objects."

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (J. K. Rowling)

"I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families"

So in the Bloomsbury paperback edition, that would be...

' I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families.'

"Chairs, and desks, their drawers flung aside, their paraphernalia scattered, had been savagely attacked with a hatchet"
That's from "Non - Stop" by Brian Aldiss, I also had this one equally near to hand..
"the trio cheered and flapped their wings" from "Politically correct bedtime stories" by James FInn Gardner which I didn't even know I had until now! weird...

I've got that one, next to Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes.
I think it was a Christmas present long ago.

"I should be the forgiving one, not you", Lucy says.

Book of the Dead - Patricia Cornwell

The book is "The Lives of the Kings & Queens of England" and page 61 has only illustrations. Do I get another chance? And if I do, is that the first complete sentence?

Interview With The Vampire - Anne Rice

This gsve it a feverish radiance and made her brown eyes more huge.

"This chapter explains where your Windows XP programs live and how to address them properly." From Windows XP for Dummies.

You did say the *closest* book!

'Parker Pyne Investigates' - Agatha Christie

The fifth sentence on Page 61 is:
"She saw me kissing you."

The Tolkien book (annotated by Douglas Anderson) actually was the nearest book as it's on my desk. I suppose the next nearest would be #7 (JKR), but that's on the floor in the corner of the room, untouched.

All other books on my desk are foreign language dictionaries and histories of WWII and the SS, so in the spirit of complete revelation~

"Slow progress at Wormhoudt was soon irking Dietrich."

from SS-Leibstandarte: The History of the First SS Division by Rupert Butler

Ed McBain - Vespers

"Neither did anyone else"

It's the nearest but a close call.

"I tried the telephone instead, thinking if it wasn't working yet I could call Ilse on my cell, but Jack had been on top of that, too."

After a long hiatus, giving Stephen King another try with "Duma Key". He mucks around a bit too much for me in his later books. I already think this 700+ plus page novel would've been a tight and good read at more like 350.