The following is from the Guardian, what happens on your page 69, display it here?

To find your perfect novel, read page 69

Musicians have long held that the true worth of an album is to be found at track seven. Marshall McLuhan recommends trying the same trick at page 69.


Source: Guardian

In his excellent 2006 book, How to Read A Novel: A User's Guide, John Sutherland calculates that, in order to work one's way through Amazon.com's entire collection of half a million novels, one would need 163 lifetimes. That's right - 162 more than any of us will ever get. Clearly, when it comes to reading books, we need to be pretty choosy. But where do we even begin? There is an answer, by the way - and it's 69.

A lot of things happen at the point of 69. (Some of them aren't suitable for inclusion in this blog). Man walked on the moon. Bryan Adams had a summer. Evel Knievel died at the age of 69. And so, ironically enough, did Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian academic to whom we owe a (strictly innocent) relationship to the number 69. His theory of how to choose a book goes like this: first of all, read page 69. If you like it, then chances are you'll like the rest of it too.

It's a simple enough concept, but does it actually work? With that in mind, I vowed to put his theory to the test: five books, my opinion of which is to be formed entirely from page 69 of each. There are problems, however - the main one being that, from one edition to another, the content of a book's page 69 will be entirely different. But the way I see it, if McLuhan's theory is to be trusted at all, it really ought to be strong enough to withstand a few variations here and there. Whether this really is the case, however, remains to be seen...

Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code (Corgi)

Robert Langdon discovers Sauniere's cryptic message in the Church of Saint Sulpice.

My experiment is thrown into doubt at the first hurdle - page 69 turns out to be the start of Chapter 8. The first thing I notice, therefore, is a lot of empty space around the chapter heading. Without much actual text, I feel like I've drawn the short straw. Still, rules are rules. And anyway, it seems quite an exciting page: there's been a murder, and they think it might be something to do with devil worship. On the other hand: "Langdon looked again at the digits, sensing it would take him hours to extract any symbolic meaning. If Sauniere had even intended any." As a forecast of the book, it sounds suspiciously like a whole load of blustering after nothing.

Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote (Vintage Classics)

Don Quixote and a Basque engage in a swordfight, overseen by two travelling ladies.

My next book takes me from one extreme to another. For starters, this looks like some kind of super-size edition of the book. (I'm quite relieved my wrists only have to take the strain of one page.) Furthermore, the print is small, the blocks of text are huge and there's no dialogue. Which is probably, on reflection, a good thing - for I've stumbled on a fantastically graphic page that is soaked in blood, gore, and testosterone. When one man is bleeding from every facial orifice available, what is there to be said? I'm instantly gratified; I did, if I'm honest, feel entirely cheated out of a murder in The Da Vinci Code.

View Complete Article & Other Page 69's from famous books

Spooky, eerie and downright weird.

HAD to check, after reading this - didn't we all?
Page 69 in my book is exactly where the key plot driver is revealed.

Of course, I shall do no writing whatsoever for the next few hours, but rifle through my shelves, 69ing.

On my page 69, my main character finally gets the chance to talk to the ragged criminal youth she's been tasked with interrogating. This is immediately after a chase scene where the kid tried to escape and she had to catch him. -----------------------------
-Chro
Author of Blades of the Fallen and The Spirit Shifter
And blogger of Journey of the Scribe

Does this mean in future agents will be asking for a covering letter, synopsis and page 69 of our novels??

I think I'm pleased - p.69 of Johnny Mackintosh isn't pivotal to the plot, but it is a key moment in the book. Johnny has just woken up to find himself floating in zero gravity and knows for sure he's in a real-life alien spaceship. Then he experiences his first "fold", as space collapses around him allowing vast interstellar distances to be crossed in no time at all. And it's important that he hates this happening and is sick, while his sister thinks it's the best thing ever.

I'll take that! www.keithmansfield.co.uk
johnnymackintosh.com

Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London was published by Quercus on 3 July 2008

So I'm hoping we have all caught onto the fact that the Theory of Page 69 is, how do you say, bunk?

I've heard the same thing said about page 147, page 99, and various other random pages.

The underlying point behind all these theories is this: a reader should be able to open up ANY page in your book and be interested in reading more. If you focus all your time on making your first page, first five pages, or first three chapters incredible, you'll neglect the rest of the book.

So here's my theory:

The true worth of a book is found at how interesting page X is, where X is some number less than or equal to the number of pages in the book. -----------------------------
-Chro
Author of Blades of the Fallen and The Spirit Shifter
And blogger of Journey of the Scribe

King James or New Revised Standard?