Entrancing books

If you want to kickstart your day with a nice view, we suggest you pay a visit to Dragons Fandango, where several beautiful pictures of Haworth and the surrounding area have been posted. Lovely!

The Globe and Mail reviews a new novel by Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y.

Directed by her adviser's surprisingly checkered past, and with the help of a real-world defrocked priest with whom she is falling in love and the protection of a Troposphere mouse god, Ariel shows herself to be a plucky pulp heroine, a reluctant Jane Eyre. (Katia Grubisic)

We suggest you read the whole review if you want to know what that is about ;)

And finally a heartwarming piece of news. New York Public Radio is broadcasting three short stories by Edith Wharton to celebrate the return of her library to The Mount, her home. The third story “A Backward Glance: Henry James” is actually a memoir.

Wharton herself recalling her phenomenal friend Henry James, whose impassioned readings (of works by Walt Whitman and Emily Bronte, among others) used to entrance her in the very library to which her books have returned. “Backward Glance: Henry James,” is read by Brenda Wehle, recent star of David Hare’s Stuff Happens. Her many television appearances include roles on Law and Order, Crossing Jordan, and Boston Legal.

It sounds worth listening to. Here's the direct link to it.

The exact quote can be read here:

From Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964 [1933]).

(...)One of our joys, when the talk touched on any great example of prose or verse, was to get the book from the shelf, and ask one of the company to read the passage aloud. There were some admirable readers in the group, in whose gift I had long delighted; but I had never heard Henry James read aloud-- or known that he enjoyed doing so-- till one night some one alluded to Emily Bronte's poems, and I said I had never read "Remembrance." Immediately he took the volume from my hand, and, his eyes filling, and some far-away emotion deepening his rich and flexible voice, he began:

Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave,
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

I had never before heard poetry read as he read it; and I never have since. (...) (Read more)

Categories: Haworth, Audio-Radio, Emily Brontë, Books