Smacking your teacher with Cathy and Heathcliff

Sky News covers the controversial wind farm plan in Brontë country (including a video):

The landscape that inspired the Brontë sisters to pen some of English literature's most enduring works is now the centre of a brewing storm over wind power.

Thornton Moor near Haworth in West Yorkshire is the subject of an application by Banks Renewables.
On moorland owned by Yorkshire Water, the company want to build four wind turbines.
Each one would be 100 metres tall, and the four together would provide power for approximately 4,400 homes.
Those opposed to the scheme include local residents and the Brontë Society, who think the moorland should remain untouched.
Anthea Orchard, chair of the Thornton Moor Wind Farm Action group, told Sky News she was not being a "nimby".
"We're used to windfarms here," she said. "But these will be twice the size and much nearer the houses.
"It will also affect tourism, putting them on either side of the Brontë Way walk."

The Spenborough Guardian publishes an article about the Brontë talk given by Christa Ackroyd at St Peter’s Church, Hartshead:

The talk was on Saturday – the 157th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s death.
John Appleyard, who was in the audience, said: “Christa asked if anyone had a favourite quote from the Brontë books.
“My favourite quote, and one which she read out is from Charlotte’s book, Shirley, in which she talks about the Luddites in the Spen Valley area. ‘Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those buildings.’
“Those words are as relevant today as when Charlotte first wrote them.”
Christa gave her talk at the table from which Patrick spoke from while he was curate at the church.
John said: “Christa believed Patrick was a much maligned character, and wished to put the record straight regarding his life. He was born in Ireland of poor and humble birth. Due to his background it was a remarkable achievement for him to be admitted to Cambridge university.

The actress Mary Beth Peil chooses her favourite books for The New York Post:

Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
The first book I ever read where I got an inkling of what they meant by passion. I took an acting class at Northwestern where we had to create scenes from a favorite book. I chose this and got so caught up in the moment in one scene, I hauled off and smacked my teacher! I got gold stars for it. She probably saw stars, too! (Barbara Hoffman)

The Observer asks several witers about rereading:

Julie Myerson.
I almost never reread. Life just seems too short – there's so much out there I still haven't read. But I'm also reluctant to try to repeat experiences. What if the magic isn't there a second time? I think there are only four novels that I've gone back to – Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald and The Magus by John Fowles – and my reason for rereading was quite surgically precise. I first read them as a teenager and was dazzled; now, as a writer, I wanted to try to unpick them, unlock the mystery, see how it worked. I failed completely, of course. They're still brilliant and dazzling, and they all still remain as tightly furled and secret as they ever were. (Chris Fenn)

Also in The Observer, a review of The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg:

Returning to seek his revenge, Henrik's plans are thrown into disarray when a usurping relative takes over the farm in the same cunning fashion as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, forcing out all the tenants. News of their destitution is greeted with dour resilience – "things just happen sometimes".  (JS Tennant)

The Record (New Jersey) talks about the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon:

Flipping through the pages of the book, I search for the "Red Room of Pain," but happen, instead, upon the graphic description of an enigmatic billionaire deflowering the college-student heroine.
Not precisely Catherine and Heathcliff declaring their love upon the moors, is it? (Virginia Rohan)

The Minneapolis Pioneer Press announces that Wuthering Heights 2011 will be screened at the upcoming Minneapolis/St Paul International Film Festival (April 28) (another festival where the film will be screened is the RiverRun Film Festival, Winston-Salem, NC -April 19, 21 and 22).  The film gets a review in The Arts Desk:

Socialist realism meets 19th-century Romanticism in Andrea Arnold's raw adaptation. (...)
Evocatively photographed by Robert Ryan, Wuthering Heights goes much further in its invoking of pathetic fallacy. There are times when the rainy, wind-whipped Yorkshire moors, with their mists and murks and teeming wildlife, are as animalistic a psychological backdrop for the adolescent love of Heathcliff (Solomon Glave) and Cathy Earnshaw (Shannon Beer) as the storm-blasted heath was for King Lear's madness. (...)
Partially because Howson is stiff and, as the grown Cathy, Kaya Scodelario  is ethereal compared with the earthbound Beer, the movie is less passionate in its second half than in its first. But Arnold sustains her poetic blend of 19th-century Romanticism and the social-realist style that made her Red Road and Fish Tank such authentic feminist revenge dramas. (Graham Fuller)

Cool Mom Picks reviews Little Miss Brontë: Jane Eyre:

When I look through the Little Miss Brontë board book of Jane Eyre: A Counting Primer, I'm struck by the way the colors communicate the moods of the actual book and how the artist includes a bird on every page in homage to one of the main themes of Charlotte Brontë's classic work. I especially love how the items counted aren't apples or balls; they're important objects from the text that evoke scenes of the very adult story. From the eight drawings that show subjects like Adèle, Mr. Rochester, and Pilot to the ten books in the library, this baby book is clearly working on a lot of levels. (Delilah)

The Times quotes Joseph O'Connor saying:

“The challenge is always to write about now,” he says. “The novelists who are in the pantheon do that. Wuthering Heights is about now. If it weren’t, nobody would read it. The thousands of Victorian novelists who have all disappeared whose names we wouldn’t know, they might have been good storytellers and able to write a beautiful description of a moon going down over a lake, but they’ve been forgotten because they didn’t achieve the alchemy that every novelist has to." (Eithne Shortall)

A very curious story in The Scranton Times-Tribune:

North Pocono's Jenn Slagus has become a force as a discus thrower on the track and field team. (...)
Choosing to broaden her horizons, she took her same dedication and work ethic to the Poetry Out Loud competition in January at North Pocono. Working tirelessly with drama coach Geraldine Featherby, Slagus studied and rehearsed, perfecting three of her favorite poems. (...)
At the regional competition, Slagus recited "Candles" by Carl Dennis, "Ah! Why Because the Dazzling Sun" by Emily Jane Brontë and "The Cross of Snow" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Joby Fawcett)

The Sheffield Telegraph is concerned about the future of Stanage Edge:

But there is another iconic place on the doorstep of Sheffield, Stanage Edge. It, too, has witnessed trespass walks in the distant past where gamekeepers tried to keep people of the edges and moorland. It too challenges and inspires (nor forgetting Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë) with its unbroken skyline of vertical rocks. Today most of Stanage in owned by the Peak District National Park Authority so is its future secure? (Terry Howard)

The Sunday Observer (Sri Lanka) discusses isolation in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea:

The theme isolation is vividly portrayed in the two novels, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847) and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966). These two novels are well known throughout the world.
They are classics. The characters, Jane, Rochester and Antoinette of these two novels are written so as to utilise the theme of isolation to provide a particular aspect of their identities.
All three characters have experienced loneliness since early childhood. This brings forth a result of isolation from society and inner isolation to the three. The reality in which these people lived is so harsh they isolate themselves from the rest of the world. (...)
Jane Eyre and Antoinette Cosway, the principal characters of Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea are entirely isolated personalities, who, despite the different backgrounds and different living conditions experience similar loneliness and despair. Jane, an orphan treated cruelly by her relations is sent to Lowood Institution to live and school. (...) (Shireen Senadhira)

The Telegraph on travelling and ebooks:

And I admit I'm intrigued by Sony Readers, Kindles and the soon-to-launch iPad, because books are a problem for me on trips. If I take a stack I never do any reading, but if I don't take any I pace around miserably, yearning for a good thriller. I'd still prefer a book that I could read in direct sunlight and take on a Li-lo and not have to recharge: I'm just saying that I am not 100 per cent averse to the idea. They'll get you somehow, though: I bet as you scroll feverishly past "Heathcliff! It's me, Cathy!" a pop-up will appear offering used copies of Wuthering Heights for 54p or Kate Bush's greatest hits on Amazon.  (Sophie Campbell)

We have to add that only iPads have a problem with reading under direct sunlight.

BellaOnline choose as Charlotte Brontë quote in a list of favourite business quotations; Mikaelas Filmblogg posts about Jane Eyre (particularly Jane Eyre 1944 and a 1946 edition of the novel with illustrations by Nell Booker); Eclectic Inspirations reviews the book; Chronicles of N reviews Jennifer Vandever's The Brontë Project; miextras uploads a 1989-90 live video of Mia Martini singing Cime Tempestose.