Rooting for the orphans

The Christian Science Monitor looks into what literature can teach us about handling money. The article ends with the question

Who knows what financial lessons are lurking in the pages of Austen, Brontë, and Dostoyevsky? (Husna Haq)

The Boston Globe reviews a local stage production of A Little Princess and reaches the conclusion that,

It is, of course, hard not to root for a small girl abandoned in an unfeeling orphanage or boarding school, whether her name is Jane Eyre or Annie. (Jeffrey Gantz)

Business Day (South Africa) has a Q and A with author Amy Tan.

Q: Which literary character most resembles you?
I would say the young Jane Eyre, before she goes off to be somebody’s wife and caretaker. (Anna Metcalfe)

Writing about The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone, the reviewer from the London Review of Books recalls the early days of Amazon.

At first only web geeks shopped from Amazon, and for a year its bestselling book was How to Set Up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site: The Guide for Information Providers. To make the site livelier Bezos hired an editorial team to review books, but sacked them when he realised that customers preferred doing it themselves. (My first book review was a freebie for Amazon: five stars for Jane Eyre.) (Deborah Friedell)

Minefield Wonderland wonders if Rochester would have married Jane if he hadn't 'experienced his downfall'. The Top Shelf Book Shelf features Wuthering Heights.