the city was asleep

Sometimes when I read I skip descriptions.
In my novel, I find myself writing few descriptions, except of people, and tones of voice and accents.
I don't seem to be motivated with trees and lakes and stuff. I don't know if that's good or bad.

From the novel Gentleman's Agreement,
here's a description I didn't skip.

---------------------
CHAPTER TWELVE
The city was asleep. New York, the nervous, keyed-up city, was almost at rest two hours past midnight. Watching the sleeping stone under the quiet sky, the mind might know that there were still people laughing in night clubs, trucks and taxis still speeding through streets and avenues, swift subways underground still thundering into lighted stations.

But to the eye itself, the city was dark, sleeping, motionless. Here an oblong of shaded yellow cut its way out of the surrounding block of stone, and there a strip of continuing light showed a whole floor of a skyscraper café, a shelf of life and animation bracketed high above the city. But apart from the single window, from the single strip, there stretched from river to river, from street to sky, a city's surrender to oblivion or dreaming.
[end quote]

[Laura Z. Hobson, 1947.

Simon & Schuster,

New York]

--------------------------------------------------

"...a city's surrender to oblivion or dreaming."

Something else I liked: the copy of the book I borrowed is, I believe, an original from the year 1947 and the pages are uneven at the right-hand edge -- a lot of books published in that time frame were like that; publishers used cheaper paper and and process, due to war-time rationing.

I liked being able to share in that experience by holding the actual book that was like that, in my hand -- instead of hearing about how it was but having a newer edition of the book with higher-quality paper and smooth, even edges.

-30-