I haven’t been doing the…

I haven't been doing the work I've been supposed to be doing. Instead, I've been futzing with the design of my stories page. Help? As you can see, for the first six stories on the page, I've added a paragraph or so of quotation. (I'm alternating italic and not, because all italics is hard to read, and all plain text ditto.) Does the new text help draw the reader in? Does it just make the page look intimidating, or cluttered? The rest of the page is left as it was before -- just a long list of titles. Would appreciate your advice!