“She stepped away from the door and put a hand over her nose and mouth, trying to calm her –“
– BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!!
I quickly disabled the alarm on my phone and flicked my eyes back to the page I was reading in Ellen Marie Wiseman’s What She Left Behind. Okay, so my thirty-minute reading session was over. Well, I couldn’t just shut the book mid-sentence. In any given moment, unless I smell something burning or there is some repulsive creepy crawler inching its way towards me, leaving a paragraph – let alone a sentence – unfinished is unacceptable. In my opinion, it is just not proper reading manners.
I started by reading the acknowledgements. I know there are many people who conveniently skip over the acknowledgements or prologue or whatever it is that comes before the actual story, but I personally like to read it all, with the exception being that the prologue is a tiring ten pages or more. Reading a novel’s introduction gives me a window into the behind-the-scenes world of the author, her publishers, and her family – her inner circle. It adds perspective to the novel as a whole. When I began the first chapter, I read the opening lines a few times over – I have the tendency to do that. I guess I reread the first few lines until I feel a sort of absorption by the book. It is almost like reciting an incantation until you are completely overtaken by the spell. Or something. Like. That.
Sitting on my desk chair with my knees propped up, I read twenty pages in the thirty minutes. I would say that I read at an average pace, perhaps a bit slower than average. My reading of the first two pages was periodically interrupted when I needed to look up the definition of one architecture form or another. I like to be able to have as accurate of a picture when I am reading a descriptive scene, and so it was essential that I figure out what a cupola was and what balustrades and a mansard roof had to do with it.
What She Left Behind, by The Plum Tree author Ellen Marie Wiseman, is a story whose chapters alternate between two protagonists, one seventeen-year-old girl living in the mid-90s, and another living during the Roaring Twenties (some scenes reminded me of The Great Gatsby). Both girls stories center around Willard State Asylum, home for the insane (feeling the anxiety anyone?). So far, it seems to be an interesting read. I am excited to delve deeper into it.
– BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!!
I quickly disabled the alarm on my phone and flicked my eyes back to the page I was reading in Ellen Marie Wiseman’s What She Left Behind. Okay, so my thirty-minute reading session was over. Well, I couldn’t just shut the book mid-sentence. In any given moment, unless I smell something burning or there is some repulsive creepy crawler inching its way towards me, leaving a paragraph – let alone a sentence – unfinished is unacceptable. In my opinion, it is just not proper reading manners.
I started by reading the acknowledgements. I know there are many people who conveniently skip over the acknowledgements or prologue or whatever it is that comes before the actual story, but I personally like to read it all, with the exception being that the prologue is a tiring ten pages or more. Reading a novel’s introduction gives me a window into the behind-the-scenes world of the author, her publishers, and her family – her inner circle. It adds perspective to the novel as a whole. When I began the first chapter, I read the opening lines a few times over – I have the tendency to do that. I guess I reread the first few lines until I feel a sort of absorption by the book. It is almost like reciting an incantation until you are completely overtaken by the spell. Or something. Like. That.
Sitting on my desk chair with my knees propped up, I read twenty pages in the thirty minutes. I would say that I read at an average pace, perhaps a bit slower than average. My reading of the first two pages was periodically interrupted when I needed to look up the definition of one architecture form or another. I like to be able to have as accurate of a picture when I am reading a descriptive scene, and so it was essential that I figure out what a cupola was and what balustrades and a mansard roof had to do with it.
What She Left Behind, by The Plum Tree author Ellen Marie Wiseman, is a story whose chapters alternate between two protagonists, one seventeen-year-old girl living in the mid-90s, and another living during the Roaring Twenties (some scenes reminded me of The Great Gatsby). Both girls stories center around Willard State Asylum, home for the insane (feeling the anxiety anyone?). So far, it seems to be an interesting read. I am excited to delve deeper into it.