Punk in the Air

Tim Adams remembers in The Observer how the release of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights thirty years ago was quite an event:

I remember the first time I heard it; the release of Wuthering Heights in 1978 coincided with my third year at grammar school in Birmingham studying Emily Brontë's novel in our English lessons. We were 13, it was a boys' school; hormones were running high. Bush seemed, uncannily, to be talking just to us.
All the plotlines that had been written up on the blackboard – "Discuss the importance of windows in the novel"; "Describe the extremes of Cathy Earnshaw's character in terms of the landscape" – were suddenly writ large in unsettling eyeliner and lipstick on Top of the Pops. It was spooky practical crit set to music: cue strangled choruses of "I'm so co-o-o-old", in breaking Brummie adolescent voices, from the back of class, and much ardent, after-hours imagining of subconscious female archetypes. Punk had been in the air, but Bush, with her scary hair, seemed just as anarchic (Johnny Rotten was intrigued; he reportedly wrote her a song, Bird in the Hand, about the sad lives of domesticated parrots; she turned it down).
As debut singles go, Wuthering Heights – the first British number one to be both written and sung by a woman – had an enormous effect in shaping Bush's career. Not only did it establish her as a unique – and easily parodied – performer, but it indelibly associated her with voices from beyond the grave.

Jonathan Romney recommends Wuthering Heights 2011 in The Independent:

It's grim up in the 19th-century North: Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold offers a windblasted, radical, racially-charged new take on Wuthering Heights[.]

Pensacola News-Journal discusses what it is to think like an adult:

For all that we've grown and all the lessons we've learned, sort of, there's still a whole lotta nonsense. And a dismaying amount of smack talk disguised as concern, or, even better, "networking." Why, it's enough to send a woman to the bleachers with her tattered copy of "Jane Eyre."But you didn't hear that from me. I'm over here, maturing. (Rebecca Ross)

The Arizona Republic describes a Twilight marathon:

This is how I found myself, a 26-year-old stay-at-home mom from west Mesa, at the theater at 8:37 a.m., wearing a homemade "Team Edward Rochester" T-shirt (as in the man Jane Eyre works for and falls in love with), dragging along my 9-month-old son, Hyrum, to a movie that wouldn't start for another seven hours. (Laurie Stradling)

An alert from Martinsburg, WV:

The Martinsburg Public Library book discussion groups have selected "Emily's Ghost" by Denise Giardina. Emily, of course, refers to Emily Brontë.
The monthly Sunday Afternoon Book Discussion meets at 2 p.m. Nov. 20, while the Brown Bag Lunch group meets at 11:30 a.m. Thursday (note: the change in dates due to Thanksgiving." Books are available at the main desk of the library.

The Lost Girl, The Harker, Nerditorial, Siobhan on Film, Myrmicat Forever review Wuthering Heights 2011; The Bella Review posts about Wuthering Heights 1992; Mood-Disordered Mama loves Jane Eyre; Junto a una taza de té (in Spanish) shares her love for the Brontës.