The mad beetle in the attic

In The Telegraph, Antony Woodward brings up one of the greatest things about winter for us bookworms:

You ‘curl up’ or ‘settle down’ with a good book - it’s the language of hibernation, not of summer. You can heighten the effect by choosing your book well: Wuthering Heights is good. Apsley Cherrard’s The Worst Journey in the World is better.

Well, the selection is up to you. This being BrontëBlog we'd say that Wuthering Heights is better.

And if curling up with a good book can be topped, then that is by adding a steaming cup of tea to the picture. The New Yorker's Book Bench goes on a literary tour of tea and wonders,

Do you have favorite tea scenes in the novels by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, or the Brontë sisters? We started to make a list, only to find that tea is everywhere. Which important plot twists don’t involve tea? At teatime, would-be lovers exchange longing glances; mothers choose suitors for their daughters; and rivals trade veiled insults in polite, singsong tones. (Eileen Reynolds)

The Wall Street Journal reports that there's a poll on the 'most depressing book of all time' on Goodreads.

At Goodreads there's also a poll of the "Most depressing book of all time"; No. 1 is Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl." Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much Is True" and "She's Come Undone" are on both the light and depressing lists, as is "Jane Eyre." (Cynthia Crossen)

And so is Wuthering Heights, which is currently number 19 while Jane Eyre is way below on number 89.

The Wall Street Journal also takes a look at the world's most expensive books and mentions the recently-auctioned first edition of Wuthering Heights which, despite being so 'depressing', fetched £163,250.

We don't know which Brontë character - if any - the Future of the Left singer Andy Falkous has in mind when he says on The Vine,

Generally, I've been out on the streets like a man who occasionally buys a baguette from the shops, walks to work, meets someone at a train station, goes to the cinema if I can be arsed... these are my general street-wise enterprises. I don't stay in the house like a character in a Brontë novel, thinking what it would be like in the French countryside... (Everett True)

There's certainly a house where we wouldn't have wanted to stay, though. The Yorkshire Post reports that there's been a deathwatch beetle infestation at Norton Conyers - one of the supposed models for Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre - which is now over.

The infestation was first discovered in a 16th century Tudor hall table in the refectory, and was later found to have spread to the floorboards, roof, and many rooms – including an attic which was visited by Charlotte Brontë in 1839 and proved the inspiration for the mad woman in Jane Eyre. (Joe Shute)

The good news is that the house will reopen to the public in 2012.

The Yorkshire Post is also proud to be able to include Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights in the ever-growing number of films shot in Yorkshire.

As for blogs, Chachic's Book Nook discusses Jane Eyre, Un libro al giorno reviews - in Italian - Elizabeth Newark's Jane Eyre's Daughter and Iris on Books has compiled a Brontë reading list.

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights