'Teenagers and young people still read Brontë'

USA Today's Happy Ever After asks writer Shannon McKenna about her favourite books.

• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery.
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
I've read these over 20 times.
All three shaped me, as a writer and a person. I'd trust Anne, or Jane, or Frodo Baggins with my life. I'm happy inviting them into my head, my memories, my personality makeup. I can't wait to read those books to my own kids.
It may seem an odd lineup, for a writer of sizzling romantic suspense — except perhaps Jane Eyre, a Gothic romance featuring a hot and problematic hero! But there is a common thread. Anne taught me what I wanted to be, and modeled kindness and positivity. Same with valiant Frodo and his Fellowship, whose hearts never faltered. Jane's moral compass never wavers, even when she's begging for scraps. I love these characters, trust them, want to hang out with them, to BE them. Books like that are true friends, a sure font of strength, comfort and courage.
I need that ray of light, sense of opening, a progression toward love and peace, in any story. If I don't get it, I feel let down. What's the point? I could feel depressed all on my own, with no help from a book. I've been told that's simplistic, banal, unsophisticated. That's OK. I'm a better person for having Anne, Frodo and Jane to trust, and look up to. It's what I aspire to achieve with my own characters.
And that sets the bar very high!

BlogCritics leads us to another Brontëite writer: Marly Youmans.

Favorite novel of all time? Tom Jones? Bleak House? Pride and Prejudice? Jane Eyre? (Suzanne Brazil)

Film director, writer and actor Taika Waititi also sounds like a Brontë fan in this interview from Now Toronto.

How much of you is in Viago? He seems like a sweetheart. One of my favourite books when I was young was Wuthering Heights. I just really loved the idea of dressing up. I remember watching the Laurence Olivier version, and I just loved the idea of wearing one of those frilly shirts with a tight jacket. I kind of mixed that sort of thing with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt from Interview With The Vampire. And a bit of it’s also my mum, just the way that growing up she’d always make me do housework and do the dishes and keep a really clean house. And then also some people, flatmates who created [chore] wheels and were really anal about that sort of shit. Characters I create are just mixtures of the people I know. It’s a fun process for me, and sometimes it’s just easier: “Oh, I’m just playing my cousin.” (Norman Wilner)

The Huffington Post interviews Charlotte Eyre, Children's Editor at The Bookseller about their Young Adult Book Prize.

How do you view the future of YA literature? I think it's got a great future and I think British writers will start to get a bit more recognition. In terms of trends, I think feminist YA is going to go from strength to strength and there is going to be a lot more diversity in terms of ethnicity and LGBT characters.
Authors aren't afraid of hard-hitting plots and that won't change any time soon.
In terms of what I would like to see, it would be nice if certain adults stopped being snotty about YA and saying things like "well I was reading Charlotte Brontë when I was fourteen". Teenagers and young people still read Brontë, Dickens, Tolstoy and any other literary author you can think of. They are reading YA in addition to, not instead of, classic novels. Plus they are perfectly capable of deciding what they want to read, they're not three years old. (Alix Long)

Poet Beatriz Villacañas mentions in ABC (Spain) Emily Brontë's so-called 'reclusive life'.

Hay diferentes formas de pasar el tiempo intensamente, ya que la intensidad de la vida depende, sobre todo, de la capacidad emocional del individuo más que de la acción propiamente dicha. La recluida vida de Emily Brontë, pongamos por caso, vivida en la vieja rectoría sita en los agrestes páramos de Yorkshire, fue sin duda intensa, y ahí está su novela Cumbres Borrascosas para demostrarlo, y pudo serlo más que la de algunos personajes de frenética y resplandeciente actividad pública. (Translation)

It was reclusive in a way, yes, but let's not forget that she got to go to London and travel abroad in a time when not that many people did so.

According to The Independent,

The characterisation [in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey] is flimsy in the extreme. Jamie Dornan’s Christian Grey, the reclusive billionaire with the “singular” tastes, is like a cross between Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre and a Chippendale dancer. (Geoffrey Macnab)

Eclectic Tales and The Book Taught review Jane Eyre. And Bored To Death is consistent with the name of the blog and explains how it's not a good idea to read Jane Eyre.