Weathering the Wuthering Heights

I recently watched the BBC production of "Wuthering Heights" with my roommate last week and found it incredibly enjoyable.

This is funny because I read the book before and didn’t feel the same sentiment. It was really difficult to read! What was funnier though was my English-major roommate felt more reluctant to watch this movie. She knows the Bronte sisters frontwards and backwards. But by the time part one was over, she was insisting we continued watching into crazy hours of the night.

We both discovered a new appreciation for Wuthering Heights thanks to a fantastic artistic take to this notorious 1800's novel.

What was so compelling to draw me back to Wuthering Heights? I recall hitting the middle of the book where the plot shifts to different characters and I wanted to quit.

The passion Heathcliff and Catherine is so twisted and compelling because their emotion overrides all the circumstances around them, and affects every person around them in the book. The book shows how un-changeable love and passion is destructive in nature, with Heathcliff and Catherine as the example of destruction and the younger generation Catherine and Hareton as the positive example that restores balance back to Wuthering Heights.

Perhaps the movie helps put faces to the characters and helps me understand the emotion that didn’t translate before as I struggled to understand the old-school text.

I heard once that Wuthering Heights gets better with age, five years later has helped validate this statement. And who knows, maybe I will like it more in even five years.

-Hillary

Gone With the Wind

1936 Pulitzer Prize winner. Its movie has won 8 Oscars. If you account for inflation, it is to be the record movie sales of all time.

But let's talk about what counts: Gone With the Wind is my favorite book.

One summer when I was on the road a lot because I was performing with a touring musical, I found many moments - in a car, backstage, even on stage - to read a book. This was probably my best summer in high school, I loved getting so much reading in!

This was also the summer that I pulled Gone With the Wind off of my sister-in-law's shelf. She said it was a great book, so I gladly took the 800 plus pages and consumed it fast.

I was pretty shocked how much I loved it. But I remember finding the very first sentence sheer brilliance in describing Scarlet O'Hara:

“Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."

And the description following gets better.

"In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin-that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.”

I recall my English teacher talking about this as she asked us, "So, what can you infer about Scarlet?" with the response from one of the guys in my class, "Well, she sounds like a babe to me."

I was surprised when I found I loved Scarlet's character. Most of my friends claimed they couldn't stand the movie or the book because of her character. I loved her ridiculous flirtatiousness, her vanity, her feisty spirit, but what stood out to me was how passionate she was. In fact, I envied her passion for life, so much so that I took a look at what I wasn't enjoying in life and decided to show some more spirit.

I soaked up her banter with Rhett, and marveled at their determination to push forward through a country disheveled by Civil War. This book was more than just a good romantic novel, but also an excellent eye opener to the attitudes in the South and an allegory about Southern post-civil war society.

After reading it, I felt a new determination to have more passion in my life and to be more fiery for the things I cared about. And honestly, I'd attribute a happier school year following because of what I took from this classic novel.

-Hillary

10 Classic Books I Want to Read

There were some books that slipped through the cracks of my English class education and I would like to go through them now, especially with a pair of more mature eyes. I've been fortunate to read many classics like Cather in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, and Invisible Man, but I feel like the older I get, the more capable I am to appreciate this literature.

1. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
2. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
3. Les Miserables (abridged) by Victor Hugo
4. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 
6. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
7. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
8. Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
10. East of Eden by John Steinbeck

One of these days when my head isn't stuck in a non-fiction textbook I hope to dive into these timeless pieces. I have found out one of my classes intends to read Hamlet this semester so that helps!

-Hillary

New Releases in Fall

As much as I love autumn, I hate to see summer come to an end.  I think it stems back to having to give my children up to the school year.  This year I am consoling myself by looking at the great list of books due to be released this fall.  I read The Last Dragonslayer (Chronicles of Kazam) by Jasper Fforde in an advanced-reading copy, but I can’t wait to buy a hardcover copy.  It will be released October 2, 2012. 

I like Jasper Fforde’s  Thursday Next series, which this world of fiction is policed by literary detectives working for the Jurisfiction.  Fforde conveys the concept that what we read in a book is just one small view of an ongoing, larger story that continues beyond the pages.

The Nursery Crimes series takes that idea one step further. Jack Sprat, his associate Mary Mary police, the Nursery Crimes division of the Jurisfiction and the characters from nursery rhymes you haven’t considered since you were five come alive.  In Jasper Fforde’s work for young adults and upper middle-grade readers, fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange is running an agency for underemployed magicians in a world where magic is fading from lack of use.  Jasper Fforde is an astute, clever and laugh-out-loud fun author similar to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.  While you wait for The Last Dragonslayer, take time to pick up The Eyre Affair or The Big Over Easy.

Book three, The Hunter of John Flanagan’s Brotherband Chronicles will be released October 30, 2012.  John Flanagan writes “guy books” that girls like.  Starting with Ruins Of Gorlan, book one of Ranger’s Apprentice series, you will find fighting, strategy, bravery and loyalty.

Utah is spilling over with writing talent.  August 28 will bring a new, multiple-author series headed by James Dashner of Maze Runner fame.  Infinity Ring is the series name.  A Mutiny in Time is the first title.  Carrie Ryan will follow with the second book, Divide and Conquer.  James Dashner created the story arc for all of the books and will write the first and last.  Two other Utah authors will be involved, Matthew Kirby (author of Clockwork Three and Icefall) writing the fifth book and Jennifer Nielsen (author of False Prince) writing book six.   The second volume of Michael Vey by Richard Paul Evans is just out and seems to be hitting the mark with fans as well as the first book.  If you are a Roland Smith fan, as I am, his contribution to the 39 Clues: Cahills Vs Vespers series, Shatterproof is scheduled for release September 4.  While you are waiting, catch up on the 39 Clues Series or read some of Smith’s extreme weather fiction: Storm Runners, The Surge or Eruption.

Writing this makes me just want to go read.  Respond with you favorites and check back for more fall releases.

-Anita