A couple of investments and other news

Art Daily reports that some of Paula Rego's Jane Eyre works will be going under the hammer soon.

Christie’s announced the online only auction of one of the largest private collections of prints by the eminent contemporary artist and printmaker Paula Rego, open for bidding from 10-19 March 2015. Coinciding with the artist’s 80th birthday this year, the sale includes all of her most important graphic series, with many sold-out editions and rarities spanning over 30 years of her highly acclaimed oeuvre. [...]
In her famous series of lithographs inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, 2001-2002, Rego highlights the social constraints imposed upon women and their capacity for great power and rebellion. In Come to Me (estimate: £2,500-3,500), Rego’s Jane is depicted in the throes of doubt and suspicion as she tries to make up her mind whether or not to return to Rochester. ‘She [Jane] hears his voice calling and when she calls him in the book she runs to him. But she’d better have her doubts of course. It’s not such a good deal. But she goes to him and that is supposed to be a happy ending. It is. But here I put her doubting.’ (The artist, quoted in: T.G. Rosenthal, Paula Rego – The Complete Graphic Work, Thames & Hudson, London, p. 176). Rego’s model for Jane was Lila Nunes, the artist’s long term assistant and muse.

More things worth investing into. The Times recommends the 'six best-value membership deals'. Among them is

2. National Art Pass
This gets you half-price entry to many major exhibitions and free entry to more than 200 museums, galleries and historic homes across the UK. Organisations giving 50 per cent off shows include the British Museum, Royal Academy, National Gallery and National Gallery for Scotland. Those providing free entry include Apsley House and the Jewish Museum in London, the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth and Florence Court in County Fermanagh. Membership costs £45 a year for individuals and £67.50 for two, when paid by direct debit. Blockbuster exhibitions that you could visit on the cheap this year include Inventing Impressionism at the National Gallery from March 4. (Mark Bridge)

CBC Books features author Kamal Al-Solaylee and the books that mean the most to him.

The first crush he had on a fictional character
I started reading children's books in Arabic, but surprisingly - or not given my colonial upbringing - my earliest memory of reading an adult book is of staying up until the early hours of the morning reading Jane Eyre for the first time in Cairo and being blown away. Even if my English wasn't fluent enough at that point to get the full impact of Charlotte Brontë's writing, I still felt its raw emotions. And what young gay boy wouldn't fantasize about the vigour and mysteriousness of Mr. Rochester?, that fine sample of masculinity. I, too, wanted to marry him. Or at least sleep with him. In the crowded Cairo I grew up in, the idea of such an the isolated and sparsely populated English countryside might as well have been another planet. I carry that juxtaposition between what I was born into and what I've moved to later in life in my head and in my heart all that time.

And speaking of Mr Rochester, Entertainment Weekly's The Community warns TV-viewers about 'the dangerous soap-opera widower', mentioning the fact that

Days of Our Lives’ Hope isn’t the first character in history to come face-to-face (-to-axe-to-knife) with the pitfalls of falling in love with a mysterious, grieving widower.
Back in 1847, Jane Eyre taught aspiring young governesses to always check the attic, in case your beloved’s insane “dead” first wife just might be living there. (Alina Adams)

While The New York Daily News republishes a 1996 review of the film adaptation of The English Patient.

Fiennes is the emotionally damaged, furrow-browed hunk, in a tradition that goes back to Brontës. (Dave Kehr)

The same newspaper also republishes a 1940 review of the film adaptation of Rebecca.

David O. Selznick has given this well-read story the high production values that he showered on his famous production “Gone With The Wind.” Nothing, apparently, was left undone to enhance the entertainment qualities of the melodrama. Something of the wild romantic quality of “Wuthering Heights” and the mystery of “Jane Eyre” pervade “Rebecca.” (Kate Cameron)

Unfortunately, this movie talk leads us to Fifty Shades of Grey. According to Flagpole,

Fifty Shades of Grey is not the abysmal train wreck assumed by the pre-movie buzz regarding the leads’ dislike for one another. Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier hated each other (legend has it Oberon ate garlic prior to filming the climactic kiss on the moors), and Wuthering Heights worked out all right. I am not comparing Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan to Oberon and Olivier or E.L. James’ BDSM bestseller to Emily Brontë’s classic of English-Gothic romanticism. (Drew Wheeler)

And according to The Cavalier Daily,

“Fifty Shades of Grey” allows us not only to be saved, but also to be the savior, restoring our hope in happy endings. We see the same formula in “Twilight” but also “Pride and Prejudice” and “Jane Eyre.” It is a theme that has extended across time and cultures — and while “Fifty Shades” may have a heavy dose of eroticism, the storyline plays along similar lines. To be loved is our ultimate wish. (Peyton Williams)

The Star Democrat recalls that

[Lucille] Fletcher adapted the first part of the Emily Brontë novel “Wuthering Heights” into a libretto for Herrmann's opera of the same name.

Seattle Weekly reviews the play The Explorers Club:

Under the direction of Karen Lund, this even ensemble expertly executes goofy gags, even if the blocking is often problematic. Strikingly silly is their spontaneously singing a snippet from H.M.S. Pinafore. Lass’ stainless performance couples the spiritedness of Jane Eyre and the accomplishment of Margaret Mead. (Alyssa Dyksterhouse)

The Warrington Guardian sums up a recent meeting at a local Women's Institute where

After tea we were transported back to the private lives of Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen.
Elizabeth Williams gave us an insight into how the loves of these great women had shaped the characters of Edward Rochester and Mr Darcy in their novels, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice.

The Atlantic looks into why 'some people feel nauseous on cars, boats, buses, and carnival rides, while others don't' so that

If two people are reading in a car, one person might spew all over his copy of Jane Eyre, while the other’s stomach stays stable enough for her to find out Mr. Rochester’s been keeping Bertha in the attic. Both people, theoretically, are experiencing the same mismatch between visual input and inner ear sensation, and the same confusion between motion and muscle movement. But some people can read in the car, and some can’t. Further complicating things, some people get car/bus/plane-sick when they’re young, and then get better with age. (Julie Beck)

The Washington Post discusses Alex Rodriguez's handwritten apology:

It wouldn’t be enough for Alex Rodriguez to say he’s sorry in person, or even to take that well-worn path for celebrities and trot out a statement through a team of publicists. This had to be in his own hand, in cursive, as if he were Heathcliff and the fans his Catherine. Forget that nearly no one communicates this way anymore (and lament that if you will). A hand-written note would seem more genuine, more heartfelt, more personal. (Barry Svrluga)

Two Teens in Morocco posts about Wuthering Heights.