write rough drafts. (Reading Response #5)

For the past several weeks, I have been working on my several papers due in the next month or so. This endeavor has taken most of my time, as has Les Mis along with other homework, therefore leaving me with little free time to read - a sad thing indeed.

In order to write these papers ( AP History and AP English ) I've had to check out several books from the MSU Library for sources. Ah, what a lovely place the Meyer Library is. The smell of old books welcomes you inside, draws you into the aisles. The constant hum of flipping pages fills the cozy air. Its a magical place, so quiet. It holds an air of something... so old that it fascinates, yet so new that it excites.

(Maybe that's just me.)

Anyhow, through the course of flipping through these books, I have absorbed a lot information, and also a teeny opinion about these type of books. Many of them are written in a long essay type of format, inserted with little side comments from the author which slip into first person, telling us 'how they really feel.' While entertaining, it detracts from the overall... No it's just entertaining.

In 'The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle' for instance (yes Ms. James, I am doing Doyle for English) there is a sentence stating: "And so he died." While it fit in with the paragraph, the sudden appearance of the authors voice was enough to make me giggle at his sentence structure.

All in all, I am enjoying reading about Henry VIII and Conan Doyle from these multiple viewpoints (even though the stress is slowly killing my souls and here are tears in some of these books) and I'm relishing the smell of old, well read books on my desk.

Cheers and happy reading,
Michelle