Musicians and detectives

Inspired by tonight's discussion on whether crime is the new literary fiction at Kings Place in London, The Telegraph dwells on that question.

The construction of a puzzle, the moment of reveal: these are the essence of detective fiction. In Austen (or Jane Eyre, or Great Expectations) they play out on a more complex level, yet they are still the engine that drives a book forwards. They create that most basic of instincts: the need to know what happens next. Which means that when crime writing aspires to the condition of the literary, then – as tonight’s Kings Place debate suggests – serious fiction has a fight on its hands. (Laura Thompson)

It looks like musicians are taking over the literary world. Patti Smith mentions her recent trip to Haworth in The Ottawa Citizen.

“I like my travels to be akin with my studies,” Smith said, “and so when I started being smitten with (author Mikhail) Bulgakov and started reading a lot of Russian literature and then watching a lot of Tarkovsky, being very immersed in Russian culture, I got some jobs in Russia.
“But I’ve always done that. We have very idiosyncratic tours — I always make sure that the band does well financially, but a lot of our tours are based on things that I’m studying, and I’ll make choices as to where we go so that I can see something special. I might want to go to Stockholm because I’m studying (writer August) Strindberg, or go to the English countryside where Charlotte Brontë wrote.” (Jordan Jivitz)

And Brontëite Stevie Nicks seems to be a Twilight fan as well, as reported by Digital Spy:

"It's a huge love story... I was just saying to the last [journalist], it's like Wuthering Heights, it's that kind of story... it's like Jane Eyre... it's a totally timeless kind of story that we can relate to." (Kate Goodacre)

Discussing whether James Bond is gay or not, Front Page Mag asks,

The left’s insistence on playing with gender roles reaches the ridiculous here. Is Mozart’s Don Giovanni gay? Could he be played by a woman? How about Jane Eyre? Could she be a lesbian? Or be played by a man? (Ben Shapiro)

Well and Tribune features Katherine Barber, founding editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, known as the Word Lady.

Barber’s love of the lexicon began early in life. In Grade 5, she read Wuthering Heights and produced a book report on Jane Eyre.
“No one ever said, Oh my Goodness, don’t you realize you’re only nine?” (Cheryl Clock)

John Ross, author of Orwell's Cough, mentions in passing that the Brontës were left motherless at a young age in an article for Express.The Telegraph recommends Treyn Holidays, which 'has tours for 2013 from about £300 (eg, Harrogate, York and Brontë Country by train, coach and steam railway).' And without apparently meaning to, ABC (Australia) Mornings recommends Jasper Fforde in a very Ffordish way:

Jasper Forde has a series about a literary detective who travels in and out of the classics such as Jane Eyre. Is that fan fiction or post-modern fiction? (Lyndall Bell)

Kirjan viemää writes about Wuthering Heights in Finnish while Echappées Culturelles posts about it in French. Romances in Pink reviews Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë in Portuguese.