This weekend I read a pretty great book. I couldn't put it down so I read it in two days. I went to Border's on Thursday evening where they were having a giant sale of books collected in several boxes. Paperbacks and hardbacks were between $2.99 and $5.99. It was heaven, I was like a kid in a candy-store. Nothing is more exciting to me than a collection of cheap books. I ended up buying 6 books for $29! Probably won't be the greatest idea considering there is school-work to be done rather than me sitting around reading all day. But as I was saying
It's called 'On Borrowed Wings' by Chandra Prasad. Its about a girl in the 1930's who lives in a small granite mining town. When her brother dies in a mining accident, she decides to take his place at Yale and to study disguised as a male student. This is the description from the author's website:
Adele Pietra has heard her mother say that her destiny is carved in the same brilliantly hued granite her father and brother cleave from the quarry of Stony Creek, Connecticut—she is to marry a stonecutter. But when Adele’s brother, Charles, dies unexpectedly, Adele sees the chance to change her life. Enrolling at Yale as Charles, Adele assumes his identity—and gender—as a way to leave behind her mother’s expectations and the limitations of her small town.
The author is incredible. She finds ways to use the fewest words to create immaculate settings. It's just how I aspire to write if I were to write a novel. Her words weave together to create a tangible object that you can roll around on your tongue. I love reading a short paragraph and leaving it with a specific taste of the scene. I tried finding one of my favorite examples but it's hard to describe without the context. This is the closest I could get, and she is describing one of the libraries on Yale's campus:
I came up for air only to check my brother's old pocket watch. Time was haphazard in the Stacks. Whole hours could slip past in the course of a minute, or so it seemed when the clanging of a bell indicated that the library was about to close. Sometimes I heard other sounds too, the metallic clatter of the book-filled dumbwaiter as it climbed between the floors, the whisper of turning pages, the scuffling of shoes. If i roamed for long enough, I'd inevitably spot someone hunkered down in a carrel or the adumbration of someone disappearing around a corner. And though I'd pretend otherwise, I'd know that there were other admirers, hushed and fleet as myself.
