“I thought it was sort of hard to follow,” Dania said, sitting down into the couch with her dogeared copy of The Bone People.
“What, because she doesn’t use quotation marks for spoken dialogue?” Eleanor asked.
“Well, that’s part of it, obviously,” Dania said. “But it’s also, like, she changes who’s talking mid-sentence half the time. The book is super atmospheric –– Gwen, I bet you just loved it, right?”
Gwen smiled, shielding her grin with a contemplative hand. “We’ll get to my thoughts.”
“Check the description and tell me if it reads all right.”
Eleanor leaned over Gwen’s shoulder, squinting to make out the text on her computer screen. Next to a photo of Gwen smizing was a block of text – Gwen’s brief bio of herself.
“This will be the first thing people see on my website,” Gwen reminded Eleanor. “It has to strike the proper tone. Smart, but approachable. Professional, but…”
“But you don’t have a stick up your butt, I get it,” Eleanor said. Returning to the bio, she checked over all the information for typos, or unsightly details. Near the bottom, her eyes narrowed.
“Do people care about your favorite critics?” she asked, craning her neck back.
Well, I’m never going to find better reading material on the flight than this, Eleanor thought.
Admittedly, she was very nervous to bring the book on the plane. While the library had facsimile copies of the book from the 1970s, Eleanor was a sucker for leather binding and had instead pulled the authentic 1932 edition of The Fun Of It off the shelf. Should anything happen to the book in transit, she was certain the fine would be hefty. Even the librarian, Eleanor recalled – did she glare at me?
But these concerns were shaken off quickly. The appeal of reading Amelia Earhart’s novel while literally soaring at 30,000 feet had a delicious appeal. She barely regarded the turbulence on the flight as she plowed through Earhart’s vivid account of early 20th century air travel.
The previous week’s viewing of Pride and Prejudice had left Dania longing for the romances. While she had appreciated hearing Eleanor and Gwen argue with Ellen about the film, she herself had found the film perfectly adequate. What it had stirred up in her, however, was a renewed desire to be lost in the rush, the sweep, the passions of a fantasy romance. The kind she had felt as a child, watching movies and not knowing that the female and male leads would always end up betrothed at the end.
All these thoughts swirled around her head as she entered the Barbara’s Bookstore in O’Hare Airport, on her way back home for a wedding. Love was in bloom, she thought, and perhaps if she could find a book to distract her from this during the flight ––
The Hanslick Girls 