Think of the Writers

The Huffington Post publishes a shocking piece of news: to read shortens your life:

On the heels of reports that watching television or spending time on the computer can decrease your life expectancy, science has made a ground-breaking report that just one hour of reading can take as much as 59 minutes off of your life.(...)
Another Doctor of Science elaborated: "Books don't have commercial breaks, there is no time to get up and move about, to refill your cola or get another handful of cookies." He continued, "It's not just about the readers, think of the damn writers. For the love of man, THINK OF THE WRITERS." Rimbaud, 37, DEAD. The Brontë sisters, 30 years old, DEAD. Keats, 25, you guessed it -- DEAD. (Anne Peterson)

Of course this doesn't include read this blog. You can read it for hours with no consequences.

Also in The Huffington Post, families of writers:

The most famous example of this, of course, was the Brontë household that included three sister novelists for the ages: Charlotte (Jane Eyre), Emily (Wuthering Heights), and the underrated Anne (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall). (Dave Astor)

Some Jane Eyre 2011 reviews:

Matt Brennan's Now and Then (Indiewire) compares Jane Eyre 2011 and Rebecca 1940:

Most versions have keyed in on the back-and-forth between Jane, strong-willed and plain, and Rochester, arrogant, powerful, and ugly, perhaps too much so. The average Jane Eyre is mincing romance with chiaroscuro lighting and Gothic arches, leaving out all the bits that make the novel innovative. Fukunaga’s vision takes the same focus but a different tack, though it starts with a little cheating: Wasikowska is no more plain, Fassbender no more ugly, than a pair of matinee idols.  (...)
What Fukunaga does well — sexual tension, misty moor-scapes, shadow houses where flames hide from darkness — he does impeccably. Certain of the other elements, like the wan interlude with St. John Rivers (boring!), seem shoved into what’s left, there to get us from Point A to Point B. What tips the balance is Wasikowska as Jane, fierce but never vicious, staring down a mean life and making something of it.

Assignment X:

It is an interesting adaptation which is saying something considering there have been like 23 of them over the years.

More reviews: Batrock, That Flighty Temptress and Pursued by a Bear (video review).

ScreenDaily gives the figures of the second Australian week of Jane Eyre 2011:

Jane Eyre is in its second weekend in Australia where it has taken $2m. Universal also holds rights for the UK, where the drama will open on Sept 9, and will follow that with the New Zealand launch on Sept 15. (Jeremy Kay)

Guam Pacific Daily News (Guam) gives advices to recent graduates:

Here's what college prepares you for: picking apart the characters of Wuthering Heights in English lit, debating justice and morality in western philosophy, and analyzing the rise of China and India in economics. It's a time for unfettered thought, contemplation and growth. (Arvin Temkar)

The Guardian goes a bit far with comparisons:

Every medium needs a defining love story. Film had Bogie and Bacall. Music had Paul and Linda. Literature had Cathy and Heathcliff. And now Twitter has you Shane Warne (@warne888) and your girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley (@ElizabethHurley). (Rachel Roberts)

The Telegraph remembers anecdotes from writers' lives:

Jean Rhys, before she wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, posed nude for an artist when she was 23. (Mark Sanderson)

Flora Poste reviews Wuthering Heights; Itchycoo visits Haworth; L'Odyssée Littéraire d'Evy reviews de two parts of the Edith-Yann comic version of Wuthering Heights (in French); Cooltural also runs a contest with copies of Juliet Gael's Miss Brontë in Portuguese.

Categories: Books, Haworth, Humour, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights