Haworth Couldn’t Wear Less

Keighley News gives an update (and an unforgettable picture) of the current status of the Haworth Couldn’t Wear Less calendar initiative to raise money to refurbish Haworth's parish church:

Volunteers have been stripping off to help raise the £1.2 million needed to refurbish Haworth’s parish church.
They have come forward to be part of a pair of charity Calendar Girls-style calendars for 2012.
These will feature people either living or working in Haworth, including some local councillors. They will be pictured against familiar Bronte Country landscape, all wearing a lot less than usual. (...)
“We’re calling them ‘Haworth Couldn’t Wear Less - His’ and ‘Haworth Couldn’t Wear Less - Hers’. “We are looking for some local businesses to provide about £1,000 worth of funding to cover the costs of printing and for outlets willing to sell the calendars for us from mid October. “People can follow the project on our Twitter account which is @HaworthCalendar.” [says Sarah Granby]. She said she would also like help from someone with computer skills to put together a thermometer-style graphic which can be featured online and updated to allow people to keep track of how many calendars are being sold. People willing to support the project can email haworthcalendar@aol.com.

The Daily Herald is not so well-informed about what it says on the upcoming premieres.

For now, however, there nary an orc or a magic wand in sight. (Male moviegoers will be relieved to know that there will also be nothing having to do with Jane Austen or a Brontë sister.)  (Cody Clark)

As you know Wuthering Heights 2011 will be premiered in the US in 2012.

Patti Nickell visited Yorkshire and writes on Kentucky.com:

When it comes to literary heritage, Yorkshire certainly has it. I spent one afternoon in the charming village of Haworth, where sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë lived with their vicar father in the parsonage. From the room where they wrote, the sisters could look beyond the church graveyard to the wild and distant moors, presumably for the inspiration needed to pen, respectively, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Daphne Lee's column in The Star (Malaysia) is full of Brontë references today:

A couple  of days ago, I received an e-mail asking for book recommendations.  This is what it said:  “I am 18 years old and a big fan of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. I tried reading Wuthering Heights because that’s Bella’s favourite book but I couldn’t really understand it. It’s too difficult for me because it’s a classic or really old. The author, Emily Bronte, is dead, I think.  “Can you recommend me love stories that are really exciting too? (...)

So, this is the reply I sent (...):
I think you might find Jane Eyre more interesting than Wuthering Heights. Written by Charlotte Bronte, the sister of Emily, it tells of an orphan (Jane) who goes to serve as a governess in a country estate called Thornfield Hall. The master of the place is Edward Rochester, a rather eccentric and alarming man whom Jane is irresistibly drawn to.
There is not a whole lot of action but there seems to be something or someone who lurks in the attics of Thornfield Hall, wandering the corridors of the house in the middle of the night, attacking house guests and laughing maniacally.
Jane Eyre was published in 1847 and is a classic, just as Wuthering Heights is, but it moves at a faster pace and is more mysterious and exciting. There is, of course, also the romance between Jane, the humble but headstrong governess, and her employer, the Byronic Mr Rochester.
Both books have been adapted for a silver screen many times. The latest Jane Eyre movie was released in March, and Wuthering Heights will be released in November.

The Guardian interviews Deborah Bull, dancer, writer and Creative Director of the Royal Opera House:

She also cycles and reads (Jane Eyre, at the moment, for the first time). (Kate Kellaway)

From a possible new Brontëite to a couple of consolidated ones:

Even when she doesn't explicitly says so, Laura Marling and the Brontës are always in the same pack. In The Independent:

Twenty-one years old, Marling is less waifish than she appears in photographs – though, with her grey-blue eyes and ghostly complexion, she still has the intense, windswept look of a Brontë heroine. (Fiona Sturges)

And the East Anglian Daily Times interviews the writer Annaliese Matheron:

There’s a lovely copy of Jane Eyre that partner Jason bought her a couple of years ago – blue cover and golden-edged pages – that’s “a treat to pick up and hold it in your hand. I read it at least once a year”.  (Steven Russell)

And even another one in The Irish Independent. The poet Rita Ann Higgins:

"It changed my life forever. I was 22 but TB makes you feel really old. But then afterwards I got younger and younger."
While in hospital, Rita Ann read two books -- Animal Farm and Wuthering Heights. She fell in love with Heathcliff and she loved the rebellion in Animal Farm. Books became living things to her and when she was discharged from hospital she signed up for evening classes and began to write. Writing made her feel good and eventually she found her form in poetry. It wasn't long before she found success with it. (Clara Dwyer)

The Independent on Sunday traces a profile of Elizabeth Taylor (the author):

At Mrs Lippincote's was a sensitive portrait of an officer's wife, and must have touched many at the time of its publication, in 1945. It was followed by 11 more novels, including Palladian, which reads like a latter-day Charlotte Brontë. (Christopher Fawler)

Delaware County News reviews Stevie Nicks's latest album In Your Dreams:

Elsewhere, Nicks draws inspiration from literary sources in “Wild Sargasso Sea” (from the book and movie of the same name) and “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)” (inspired by the film New Moon), as well as places in “New Orleans” and “Italian Summer” and events in “Soldier's Angel.” (Joe Szczechowski)

Another music album, Evangelista's In Animal Tongue is reviewed in The F Word:

The band list their genre as gothic on their MySpace page, although this is gothic like the wildness of the Brontë sisters' novels, rather than like The Cure. (Cazz Blase)

The Compulsive Reader posts about Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre.