Of lists, libraries and motherly business

Our melting pot of news for today contains a little bit of Shirley, some book lists and some motherly thoughts.

1. The San Antonio Current explains the origins of the name of the Oakwell Branch Library. Now that it seems that could be renamed honoring Robert H. Tobin, the man that made it possible.

Almost 40 years ago, a sentimental San Antonio philanthropist named Robert L.B. Tobin donated 1.5 acres of his family land along the Salado Creek to the City's public-library system. He asked that the branch name honor his family's ancestral home in England, Oakwell Hall - a manor house built in the late 16th century and mentioned in Charlotte Brontë's second novel, Shirley. Tobin refused to pin his surname to the philanthropic gesture, said J. Bruce Bugg Jr., a co-trustee in charge of Tobin's estate.

2. The Scoop comments the recent Whitcoulls Top 100 Books list. The list is compiled by Whitcoulls customers in New Zealand: Once again we asked our customers to nominate their three favourite books by voting on-line. We were overwhelmed by the response, with nearly 100,000 votes received.

The updated Whitcoulls Best 100 Books list is out, and I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that Dan Brown’s holy pot boiler, “The Da Vinci Code”, emerged at the top of the heap.

What the people in these polls don’t seem to realize is that they are supposed to be voting for their favourite books of ALL time, not the latest to catch their eye in the last ten minutes or so. (...)

But the worst. THE WORST and most wounding thing to any reader: serious or otherwise is that wretched Jeffrey Archer scored number 54. Not so bad in itself, the old lag does have his fans after all. But immediately behind him are (respectively) Orwell’s 1984!!!!! And (even behind that) WUTHERING HEIGHTS. What can you say?

Not only Wuthering Heights was in number 56, Jane Eyre reached number 68. Not so bad, considering how this poll is made and the absence of any film or massive reminder of the novels in the last year.

3- And finally this entry on Fernham blog, makes an interesting and sometimes overlooked point:

“Oh damn,” said Julia Hedge, “why didn’t they leave room for an Eliot or a Brontë?”--Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room

Woolf didn’t have children. She buttressed her disappointment by noting that none of the great four women of the nineteenth century (Austen, Eliot, Brontë, and Brontë) had children. Still, she insisted on the importance of “thinking back through our mothers.”

Categories: In_the_News