Too much of a good thing isn't always a good thing

Before I start my actual post I'll give you a little background information. Every quarter my english teacher requires us to read 4 "just right" books. The reading 4 books isn't the hard part for me. The hard part is finding "just right" books that I actually want to read. I mean there really aren't that many books out there that cater to the 14-year-old who's reading level is that of at least a high school senior. So I usually either end up reading books that are too easy or too boring.

This quarter, one of the 4 books has to be about the Holocaust. At least you can't read a boring book on the Holocaust. Well you could, but you don't have to. So I clicked on the district library's website and looked up the keyword, "holocaust" for materials at West Branch in the adult section. I ended up choosing a book called The Lost: a search for six out of six million by Daniel Mendelsohn. While taking a break after writing 2 of my 3 essays in 1 hour and 45 minutes, I started reading it. It's pretty good, and very intriguing, but I haven't gotten very far so I don't have a whole lot to say. I do want to say that though I love descriptive words and I think they're very necessary to keeping a reader reading, it is possible to use them too often. I've never experienced that before, but sometimes I have to stop and pick the descriptive words off one by one until I just have the backbone of the sentence to even tell what's going on. I hope Mendelsohn slowed down when he got to writing the part about the actual Holocaust or I'll start having sleepless nights again. If you have as vivid an imagination as I have, too much description gives you too clear a picture and you start living what's happening in the book in your mind. This happened while I was reading Sherlock Holmes. I finally had to stop because I was losing sleep lying awake at night imagining vipers slithering down and killing me in my sleep, ("The Speckled Band"). Descriptive words are great, but too many describing words and you've lost your readers completely.

Kisses,
Abbsters


The book

Daniel Mendelsohn