Secret Lives and Reading Literary Pages

We present today two very different books with Brontë mentions:

SECRET LIVES OF GREAT AUTHORS
What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights
Robert Schnakenberg
Quirk Books

ISBN: 1594742111
Pages: 304
Published: April 2008

In the tradition of Quirk’s bestselling Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents (100,000+ copies in print), here are outrageous and uncensored profiles of the world’s greatest writers, complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright bizarre facts. Consider:

# Edgar Allan Poe was kicked out of West Point Military Academy.
# Louisa May Alcott was addicted to opium.
# W. B. Yeats paid surgeons to transplant monkey glands into his scrotum.
# J. R. R. Tolkien slept in his bathroom.
# Kurt Vonnegut managed a Saab dealership before hitting the big time.

With chapters on everyone from William Shakespeare to Thomas Pynchon, Secret Lives of Great Authors tackles all the tough questions your teachers were afraid to answer: What’s the deal with Lewis Carroll and little girls? Is it true that J. D. Salinger drank his own urine? Why was Ayn Rand such a big fan of Charlie’s Angels? The classics were never this much fun in school!

There's also a chapter devoted to the Brontë sisters. Expect lots of TB, graveyard images and well... imaginative (re)constructions of the Brontë story:

"Sadly, what could have been a new beginning turning out to be the beginning of the end. Branwell drank himself to death in 1848, just months after his sisters' novels were published. Emily thought the best way to pay tribute to him was to attend his funeral in bare feet ... during a hellacious rainstorm".

Well, as John Ford used to say: print the legend.

The second book was published last year in Italy:

Pagina Lette
Paola Tonussi
ISBN: 978-88-89480-75-5
QuiEdit Editoria per l'Università Italia e Internazionale

Ho raccolto in queste pagine autori diversi e brani sparsi, da cui spero emerga quella gioia unica e infinita, che nobilita le nostre giornate: la lettura. Il filo conduttore è uno solo, le parole che Catherine Earnshaw pronuncia nella cucina di Wuthering Heights ad una nervosa Nelly Dean, consapevole già di essere alle soglie del mistero: “I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.” “Ho sognato sogni nella mia vita che sono stati poi sempre con me, e hanno cambiato le mie idee: m’hanno attraversata, come il vino si mescola all’acqua, e alterato il colore della mia mente.” A chiunque sappia di cosa stiano parlando le due figure davanti al fuoco è dedicato questo libro.

Google translation ->
I have collected in these pages different authors and pieces scattered, from which I hope will reveal that infinite and unique joy, that ennobles our days: reading. The underlying theme is only one, the words that Catherine Earnshaw pronounced in the kitchen of Wuthering Heights to a nervous Nelly Dean, already aware of being on the threshold of mystery: "I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. " This book is dedicated to anyone who knows what they are talking about the two figures in front of the fire.

Categories: Books, Scholar