A Book Experiment

My momma always said, "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."  ~Forrest Gump

So true, except that around here it's more like a bag of stale pretzels. Oh well, it's Monday and, believe it or not, I've got another post.
Remember that cozy mystery I mentioned last week? The one that I said was way out of my usual reading? I'll say. I made it all the way to paragraph 18, which I quote for you here: "Get Lisa to rub out the kinks in those muscles," Kelly suggested to mountain biker Greg. "After all, she's a physical therapist." 
[Edited to Add: I find this so annoying because the author has a large group of characters to introduce and she does it this way. Goodness, she explained two characters in one fell swoop. Greg is a mountain biker and Kelly is a physical therapist. Sigh.]
Okay, I know that the experiment I am about to share is profoundly unfair. Not every paragraph of every book can sing the high note throughout. But that paragraph resulted in my tossing the book aside forever. My philosophy of book reading is that it must grab me and make me want to read it very early on and it really can never be insipid. What's yours?
Do you like an experiment as well as I do? I don't even care if they're invalid. Now see? A scientist would toss what I'm about to do to the floor! 
Here we go... I arbitrarily drew ten books (differing genres) from my shelves . I have enjoyed them all. I counted to the 18th paragraph of each book and have copied them down. See if you can find one that you'd toss and one that you'd like to read. This can be fun. Right? Oh come on now, be a sport. (Yes, I'll reveal the book and author after the pretty picture...don't peek!)
1. It is not that the homes of these unself-disciplined children are lacking in parental discipline of a sort. More often than not these children are punished frequently and severely throughout their childhood—slapped, punched, kicked, beaten and whipped by their parents for even minor infractions. But this discipline is meaningless. Because it is undisciplined discipline.
2. Fear scurried down my back. I hauled myself up onto my hands and knees. Dusty Routt, the pretty, ambitious twenty-year-old whose family had lived across the street from us for the past three years, lay a foot away. She still wasn't moving.
3. But that second phrase—"and created the wind." We think of mobiles that modern man is making, mobiles that not only have form but movement, moving with the slightest breath of air. Here is the desire for movement in art!
4. Steven was harassed and impatient. In our business—getting an issue out—time dictated our decisions and our reactions. After a while, it became second nature, and we spoke to each other in a shorthand. There was never time for the normal give and take of an argument. I glanced at Minty. She was typing away studiously, but she was, I knew, listening in. I said reluctantly, " I could manage it by tomorrow morning." 
(Vee here:I chose paragraph 19 because 18 was a one-word response.)
5. A light turned on in David's thoughts. "I consider this guy funny, even though he is a pain in the rear to a lot of people at work, yet I go bonkers over some of the things that the two people close to me do that aren't nearly as bad. Am I using a different yardstick to measure the people close to me?"
6. Now that they've all moved out, our home has changed. Where music once blared, there is nothing but stillness; while our pantry once shelved eight different types of cereal, there is now a single brand that promises extra fiber. The furniture hasn't changed in the bedrooms where our children slept, but because the posters and bulletin boards have been taken down—as well as all other reminders of their personalties—there is nothing to differentiate one room from the next. But it was the emptiness of the house that seemed to dominate now; while our home was perfect for a family of five, it suddenly struck me as a cavernous reminder of the way things ought to be. I remember hoping that this change in the household had something to do with the way Jane was feeling.
7. Obviously, I wanted to have the problem that could melt away. After all the harsh news the doctor had brought to me in those last few minutes, the word melt seemed soothing and peaceful. 
8. They had fun. Two of the first non-baby words I uttered were gin fizz, mysteriously the name of a large blue teddy bear, a favour they brought back from a New Year's Eve party. Gin Fizz was my companion for years, my Winnie-the-Pooh. Because of him, I believed Christopher Robin's bear was blue. My parents claimed that I named him Gin Fizz; that might say something about their life style, but I cannot remember. I did not know it was a drink for years, and by the time I found out, no one drank it any more. The French called a line of yachts Gin Fizz, for equally obscure reasons. For me the words never connoted anything but teddy bear.
9. As Kathy sang of friends who had been taken for granted, sweethearts she had known, and a wonderful world full of strangers just waiting to make a connection with us (while we turn our eyes away), something deep within me stirred. There is so much I was taking for granted. I didn't want to continue to live unconsciously.
10. To top that off, he'd quit smoking twelve years ago, cut out the peach brandy he'd fooled with after Juanita passed, and increased what he put in the plate on the occasional Sundays he showed up at [church].

 ~Library Books~
The memoir about Katharine and E.B. White was read in an afternoon. I love memoirs. I am in the middle of Seaworthy by Linda Greenlaw...interesting and much different subject material from what I usually select, but having read The Lobster Chronicles, it seemed a logical choice. And you already know what happened to the other one.☺
What are your favorite kinds of books to read? Do you actually have a favorite book?
Answers:
1. The Road Less Traveled by M.Scott Peck (self-help, spiritual) 2. Dark Tort by Diane Mott Davidson (murder mystery) 3. Hidden Art by Edith Schaeffer (Christian homemaking) 4. Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan (fiction) 5. Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People by Elizabeth B. Brown (self-help, spiritual) 6. The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks (fiction) 7. Plant a Geranium in Your Cranium by Barbara Johnson (Christian humor) 8. Wordstruck by Robert MacNeil (memoir) 9. Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach (essays) 10. Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon (Christian fiction)
There! Wasn't that fascinating? ☺
A lovely week to you...