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The social scientist (and Friend of the Blog) Cary Federman recently alerted me to an observation once made by Ford Madox Ford: "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."

That's a bold claim.

Is Ford's Page 99 Test any more reliable than Marshall McLuhan's Page 69 test?

For the Page 99 Test, I hope to have authors comment on whether Page 99 reveals "the quality of the whole" about their books. We'll try the test on new books, contemporary classics, and a few time-honored books, with recognized experts applying the test to the text.

Perhaps some authors will apply both tests.

Thanks for reading.

--Marshal Zeringue