30 April 2008

Book Meme

Since ALL the cool kids are doing it, I'll give the Book Meme a try. Goes like this:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2. Find page 123.
3. Find the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Pick up the nearest book. While I'm sitting in the fracking household library! Hmmm... that would mean either the weapons/military shelf, or the religions shelf...

Page 123 is Chapter 14: Nine Configurations and Two Questions (Passages from the T'ung Tien). So we go to page 124. Our last three (of eight) sentences:

"Therefore in battle formation they are not firm, when they engage in battle they are not victorious. We should assemble the people and gather the masses; collect the foodstuffs, livestock, and cloth; defend the walled cities and prepare to defend the passes; and dispatch light troops to sever their supply routes. If they are not able to provoke us into battle; their provisions fail to arrive; and there's nothing in the countryside that they can plunder, their Three Armies will be in difficulty."

From The Complete Art of War: Sun Tzu & Sun Pin, translated by Ralph D. Sawyer

Anybody I'd tag has already done it...

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