Here are the Booking Through Thursday questions for today:
Pick up the book that is closest to where you're sitting right now.
- What are the book's title and author? "Ancestry's Red Book" ed. by Alice Eichholz. (Mine is the 1992 edition.)
- Turn to page 127. Locate the third paragraph, first sentence. Type that sentence here: "A number of Florida land records, including the 'Florida Donation Entry Files' and 'Private Land Claims' are held by the National Archives, and a number of them can be found indexed in Florida Land: Records of the Tallahassee and Newnansville General Land Offices[s] [sic], 1825-1892 (Bowie. Md.: Heritage Books, 1989)."
- Does the sentence make sense out of context? Er, well, it's a bit dry, to be sure, but I suppose it makes sense....
- Seeing it sitting here by itself, out of the book, is it funny? Sad? Strange? Does it make you want to explore its source? It's a little bit mystifying, even to me! (It actually does make me want to read further, but not perhaps in the way the questioner intended. I have not done much genealogy for the past seven or eight months, and although my ancestors apparently never set foot in Florida, they were in a lot of places mentioned elsewhere in this book, and the idea of the book sitting here unconsulted makes me a bit wistful to do some more sleuthing.)
- Are you currently reading this book? No. I keep my genealogy reference shelf close to the computer, for easy access (librarians, huzzah!). I was rather hoping that the "first book" I came across would be something fascinating and conversation-provoking, but I didn't want to cheat!
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