Better Late Than Never: Page 123

After being tagged by the delectable Maîtresse with this literary meme - and accepting enthusiastically - I promptly forgot all about it until now, as I sit, eating toasted bagels with Nutella (try it!) and nursing a hangover, on the sofa at Rhino75 Towers. So, as I'm sure you've all been on tenterhooks (my italics) over my response, here goes. Given that this is supposed to be a literary exercise, I'm tempted to exclude the first book to hand, Lindsey Bareham's excellent "In Praise of the Potato" but the answer is too good to ignore:

"Potato Soup Garnished With Lobster - Not, as you might expect, a fancy nouvelle cuisine recipe but an old British one as unearthed by Theodora Fitzgibbon in her Art of British Cooking. The end result is a rich, creamy, thick soup which is incredibly luxurious and well worth the expense of lobster. Shrimps make a good cheap substitute."

Don't they always? And isn't Theodora Fitzgibbon a fantastic name? Tremendous. But, of course, I can hear you asking, is it , strictly speaking, literature? Probably not. Which brings me to page 123, five sentences down, of the second book in the coffee table pile:

"'Please, General, as if I would,' answered the captain, his nose redder than ever. He smiled, and his smile showed that his two front teeth were missing - they had been knocked out by a rifle-butt at Izmail. 'Oh, and tell Dolokhov to rest easy - I shan't forget him.'"

Now, I don't think that anyone would deny this bears at least some of the hallmarks - missing teeth, a rifle-butt - of great literature. But from which magnum opus does it come? OK, it's not much of a quiz but, if you've got nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, or a Monday morning or whenever you're reading this, shoot me a comment with the answer. In the meantime, I shall in turn throw down the meme gauntlet to the lovely Nardac, Tin Foiled and Meg Le Blagueur. The rules are simple: Turn to page 123, count down five sentences and copy out the next three. Who dares wins!! (??)