Are you the right kind of reader?

Very book-ish news today. First of all, Joel Rickett from The Guardian looks at the state of things in the world of publishing.

The Oneworld Classics list has been developed in partnership with Elisabetta Minervini and Alessandro Gallenzi, founders of Hesperus Press and Alma Books. It has two strands: a series of mainstream classics such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Treasure Island; and a "connoisseur" series.

Hesperus Press - along with Juvenilia Press - are to be thanked for their efforts in publishing the lesser-known works of classic authors. Both publishing houses are responsible for making widely available titles such as The Foundling and The Green Dwarf (more Brontë books published by Hesperus Press) or My Angria and the Angrians and several volumes of Tales of the Islanders (more Brontë books published by Juvenilia Press).

Debra Adelaide reviews for The Australian a book we mentioned here months ago: Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life by Michael Dirda.

In Wuthering Heights, the wild and wilful Catherine Earnshaw takes a worthy contemplative book that has been forced on her and throws it into the dog kennel, vowing she "hated a good book". Catherine is a creative soul, which is why she dreams and rebels, why she is writing the diary in which this incident is recorded. She is endowed with spirit and imagination, and she knows that no one should be bullied into reading -- anything at all -- and that reading for self-improvement or edification or punishment is despicable.
She knows reading is meant to enlarge the possibilities of the imagination, not reduce and confine it. She throws the book away because she is the right kind of reader.

Then she goes on to wonder why do we read at all and writes an interesting article overall.

The Times Online reviews another book previously mentioned here as well: The Complete Book of Aunts by Rupert Christiansen.

Here we have Elizabeth Bennet’s sage Aunt Gardiner, there the nagging crones who provoke George Eliot’s Maggie Tulliver to lop off her hair. Jane Eyre’s despicable Mrs Reed meets her match in Dickensian “ good egg” Betsy Trotwood.
Between lurk fairy-tale aunts, impostor aunts, chain-smoking Simpsons variants,
pornographic harridans and she who made “A handbag!” immortal.

Libraries are renewing their programmes. Melbourn library, in Hertfordshire, has launched a new initiative.

He said: "We intend to put out a central display every two or three weeks which will reflect major TV programmes, which we started with Jane Eyre."

As we have been hoping all this time, the new adaptation will attract a new bunch of readers to the book :)

And finally The Hindu takes a look at the relationship sisters have. Of course, the Brontë sisters make a brief appearance in the article.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte were raised by their mother's sister, lived in Haworth and wrote all those English classics.

Categories: Books, Juvenilia, Wuthering_Heights, In_the_News