You Just Want More

The Independent follows the work of the Not Shut Up charity. The work of the painter and writer, Chris Wilson catches our interest:

My first book, Horse Latitudes, is based on my prison years and is illustrated with 16 paintings. It was inspired by Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, which I read when I was in California Rehabilitation Center 18 years ago. My aim was to show what it's like for 200 men in this huge tank, triple-bunks, people kipping on the floor.

The Irish Independent reviews the new novel by Maria Murphy, For the Love of Martha:

Fans of Charlotte Brontë and Daphne du Maurier are in for a treat with this novel by new Irish author, Maria Murphy. It's got all the necessary ingredients of a period piece: a penniless governess, a manor house, a passionate romance and a perhaps a restless ghost. However, there is also a contemporary love story tangled up with the older one. Atmospheric and beautifully written, it is sure to establish Murphy as one to watch amongst our panoply of Irish writers. (Ann Dunne) 

BlogHer vindicates Wuthering Heights:

Whenever I start feeling bitter, there is one book (and it is a movie) that makes me believe in the magic and drama of love.
Some people read it in high school, some as an adult and some not at all. I actually had to read it in college for a class. One assignment was to write down the family line as we read it. If you haven't read it then let me just say that the names can get confusing due to the married and maiden names, along with nicknames, siblings, children, etc.
Even though I had to do writing assignments while reading this book, it quickly became an all time favorite book of mine. You get trapped in the drama, the love, the loss and when it is over...you just want more. (J. Warren)

The BBC's A Point of View analyses selfies both culturally and historically:

It's undoubtedly one of the pleasures of reading, when we are young, to come across characters who feel as we do. Oliver Twist hungry and having to ask for more - why, that was exactly what I wanted to do after every school lunch. Jane Eyre orphaned and demeaned, blamed for crimes she hasn't committed - who ever went through childhood without suffering in that way. 

The Edmonton Sun interviews Amy Shostak, artistic director of Rapid Fire Theatre:

What’s your weirdest habit?
I am newly obsessed with all things Jane Eyre. Bonnets, grey dresses, falling down in muddy fields... I also lick the flavouring off chips before eating them.

Lake Tahoe News and pulp fiction:

Cheap paperback books are like sex: They claim attention, elicit memories good and bad, and get talked about endlessly. The mid-20th century was the era of pulp, which landed in America in 1939.
You could pick up these paper-bound books at the corner drugstore or bus station for a quarter. They had juicy covers featuring original (and sometimes provocative) art, blurring the lines between canonical literature (Emily Brontë and Honoré de Balzac) and the low genres of crime, romance, and Westerns.

The illustrator Diglee complains on her blog about the absence of women writers in the French baccalauréat. Among the quoted female authors we found the Brontë sisters.

Touring Italy from bookstore to bookstore, Giulia Lagioia recounts her experiences on Internazionale (Italy). In a library in Calabria:

Arrivato l’orario di chiusura, mise la saracinesca a mezz’asta. Stappò una bottiglia di vino, ci offrì da bere. Continuò senza stancarsi, fino all’una del mattino. “Conoscete Curzio Malaparte?”. “Conoscete Emily Brontë?”. “Diceria dell’untore di Gesualdo Bufalino?”. Sono quasi venticinque anni che cerco di capire chi fosse quel signore. (Translation)

ExcentriKs (in Spanish) is reading Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. The California Journal of Women Writers reviews Wuthering Heights. Sharon Booth posts about Jane Eyre.