University of Chicago Prompt #2 (optional)
Share with us a few of your favorite books, poems, authors, films, plays, pieces of music, musicians, performers, paintings, artists, blogs, magazines, or newspapers. Feel free to touch on one, some, or all of the categories listed, or add a category of your own.
For me to see is to read. I have always been that way.
To this day, between eleven in the evening and three in the morning have always been my secret hours. Under the covers, the pages of my open book, illuminated by a sneaky circle of light, were gateways to worlds. I could immerse myself for hours reading about the nail-biting adventures of the unlikeliest hobbit-heroes in the Lord of the Rings, the real yet unbelievable experiments done with cadavers in Mary Roach's Stiff, the scintillating, analytical investigations of Sir Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, or occasionally indulge myself reuniting with childhood heroes such as that of Harry Potter, Dr.Seuss, and Sydney Carton. All of it, ink on paper that once written, is preserved, forever unchangeable, forever powerful.
Of course, despite my best efforts, my parents woke up these ungodly hours, searched for the telltale shine of mischief under the doorgap and unexpectedly barged in to wrest my latest inquisition and the possible fire-hazard in the flashlight from my hands under the sheets. However, the scoldings and the sudden raids did nothing to damp my young, stubborn spirit. If unsafe in my own bed, I had to resort to desperate measures. Hence, my closet became my new niche for rebellious discoveries, my makeshift library in which I still spend countless hours in, reading and gleaning.
I look down at my hands: grown, callused, fingers, turning page after page in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, lost in its complex, interwined tales, comparing them to the small, baby-soft, fledging fingers of years before that left sticky marks on every page of The Giving Tree. Identical hands, yet the world for the person attached to them has changed immensely from that of a child alone, reading for friendship, to that of a matured person, reading for influence. Every precious book I have read may really "amount to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean, yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?" (Cloud Atlas).
Even now, I face Victor Hugo's thousand plus pages of Les Miserables and a collecter's edition of Where's Waldo. Daunting tasks but giving up would be akin to leaving a task incomplete. Besides, I never leave a book unfinished.
This is my essay for this prompt. It was originally a UC essay that I cut down and revised a lot to fit the prompt. I was wondering if it deviates too much from the prompt? Are the books I chose okay? Are there so much that I seem to be overwhelming the reader? Is my second (technically third if you count the first sentence as its own paragraph) paragraph too...unnecessary? Critique and comments please! this essay is due tomorrow!
Share with us a few of your favorite books, poems, authors, films, plays, pieces of music, musicians, performers, paintings, artists, blogs, magazines, or newspapers. Feel free to touch on one, some, or all of the categories listed, or add a category of your own.
For me to see is to read. I have always been that way.
To this day, between eleven in the evening and three in the morning have always been my secret hours. Under the covers, the pages of my open book, illuminated by a sneaky circle of light, were gateways to worlds. I could immerse myself for hours reading about the nail-biting adventures of the unlikeliest hobbit-heroes in the Lord of the Rings, the real yet unbelievable experiments done with cadavers in Mary Roach's Stiff, the scintillating, analytical investigations of Sir Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, or occasionally indulge myself reuniting with childhood heroes such as that of Harry Potter, Dr.Seuss, and Sydney Carton. All of it, ink on paper that once written, is preserved, forever unchangeable, forever powerful.
Of course, despite my best efforts, my parents woke up these ungodly hours, searched for the telltale shine of mischief under the doorgap and unexpectedly barged in to wrest my latest inquisition and the possible fire-hazard in the flashlight from my hands under the sheets. However, the scoldings and the sudden raids did nothing to damp my young, stubborn spirit. If unsafe in my own bed, I had to resort to desperate measures. Hence, my closet became my new niche for rebellious discoveries, my makeshift library in which I still spend countless hours in, reading and gleaning.
I look down at my hands: grown, callused, fingers, turning page after page in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, lost in its complex, interwined tales, comparing them to the small, baby-soft, fledging fingers of years before that left sticky marks on every page of The Giving Tree. Identical hands, yet the world for the person attached to them has changed immensely from that of a child alone, reading for friendship, to that of a matured person, reading for influence. Every precious book I have read may really "amount to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean, yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?" (Cloud Atlas).
Even now, I face Victor Hugo's thousand plus pages of Les Miserables and a collecter's edition of Where's Waldo. Daunting tasks but giving up would be akin to leaving a task incomplete. Besides, I never leave a book unfinished.
This is my essay for this prompt. It was originally a UC essay that I cut down and revised a lot to fit the prompt. I was wondering if it deviates too much from the prompt? Are the books I chose okay? Are there so much that I seem to be overwhelming the reader? Is my second (technically third if you count the first sentence as its own paragraph) paragraph too...unnecessary? Critique and comments please! this essay is due tomorrow!
