We've been meme-tagged: Excerpt from books on my desk

Kivi Leroux Miller over at the Non-profit Communications blog tagged us. With a meme no less.

Here were the instructions.

1. Pick up the nearest book (or in my indecisive case: books).
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I reckon I’m going to do this two different ways: books on cat_aidg ‘s desk and books on cat_laine’s desk. The dilemma with these things is picking books that don’t make it seem like you’re trying to hard. Below are 4 that were sold by, recommended by or written by friends.

Work Desk

Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (25th Anniversary Edition) by E.F. Schumacher. Purchased from a friend’s bookstore to keep in the spirit.

Rather less than one-half of the total population of this country is, as they say, gainfully occupied, and about one-third of these are actual producers in agriculture, mining, construction, and industry. I do mean actual producers, not people who tell other people what to do, or account for the past, or plan for the future, or distribute what other people have produced. In other words, rather less than one-sixth of the total population is engaged in actual production; on average, each of them supports 5 others besides himself, of which two are gainfully employed on things other than real production and three are not gainfully employed.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins (Thanks Ben T for the vacation reading)

I had breakfasted earlier that morning, and the maitre d’ gave me an odd look. I glanced around. Graham Greene sat alone at a table near the wall.

Home Desk

The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism by Matt Mason (read his blog, he’s great)

Some corporations have even stopped flirting with the art form and taken to doing the graffiti themselves. IBM, for example, bombed the streets of San Francisco in 2001 with logos stenciled on sidewalks, facing the wrath of city officials. “It’s an urban visual blight issue”, snapped the director fo the Department of Public Works to CNN afterward, talking about graffiti and advertising as one and the same thing.

Odes to Common Things, Bilingual Edition by Pablo Neruda

Ode to Bread

Because we plant its seed
and grow it
not for one man
but for all,
there will be enough:
there will be bread
for all the peoples of the earth.
And we will also share with one another
whatever has
the shape and the flavor of the bread:
the earth itself,
and love –
taste like bread
and have its shape,
the germination of wheat.
exists to be shared,
to be freely given,
to multiply.

I tag:

1. Rob Katz
2. Shane Jordan
3. Jose Gomez-Marquez
4. Aman Bhandari
5. John Barrie

Hmm, note to self, get to know more female bloggers.