Your favourite Brontë sister

Deborah Lutz, author of The Brontë Cabinet, tries to guess what your favourite Brontë sister says about you on Bustle.

Jane Eyre keeps you up late into the night, feverishly turning the pages so you can reach that romantic climax once again (how many times has it been? You’re not telling). Or, you have some tragic lines from Wuthering Heights tattooed on your body, say “He’s more myself than I am.” Then again, could you be that rare bird who eschews the dramatic love story and instead sits in a café reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, underlining the passages about the abuse of women men got away with because of backward Victorian laws?
You might do all three, but one of these novels — one of these writers — speaks to you about who you really are. You feel known when you read about Jane (or Catherine, or Helen). Your true passions bubble up to the surface when you pore over Charlotte’s — or Emily’s or Anne’s — prose.
The peculiarities of the Brontë sisters and their fans have been much on my mind lately. Conversations at parties take a predictable turn. Someone asks me what I’m writing, and I mention my book: The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects. Then the question about which novel or sister I favor comes up. When the discussion becomes general, a heated argument often follows. You’d be surprised at the seriousness of this topic for some; I’ve even heard of friendships faltering over it.
What I’ve found is that the Brontë you prefer exposes private corners of your personality, perhaps more than you would care for anyone to know. So, which Brontë do you love most… and what does it say about you? (Read more)

Another author with a Brontë-related book is Patricia Park with her novel Re Jane, an extract of which is published by WBUR's Here and Now. There's also an audio interview with the author.

Author Patricia Park first read Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” as a 12-year-old child of Korean-Argentine parents. She was particularly struck by Jane’s status as an orphan in the novel, and how that status made Jane an outcast in her own family.
“Orphan” was something Park’s mother called her when “I was acting in a shameful way that disgraced her family,” she told Here & Now’s Robin Young. Years later, Patricia Park decided to write her own version of the “Jane Eyre” story, called “Re Jane.”
Set in modern times, her Jane, Jane Re, is a half-Korean, half-American girl raised in a Korean community in Queens, New York. Jane Re’s life becomes upended when she decides to become an au pair for a Brooklyn couple.

Newsday recommends the book.

Hawke's Bay Today (New Zealand) interviews writer Kate Riordan.

What's next to you? I've just begun edits on my next novel for Penguin. This one moves between 1878, 1910 and 1922 and follows the lives of a grandmother and granddaughter who are or have been governess to the same family. I love governesses - not only because there are some fantastic examples in literature, such as Jane Eyre, but because they occupied a unique position in the household - not one of the family, but not really one of the servants either. I've also done a detailed plan for the book after that, which ventures more towards crime and is set in Cornwall during World War II. I can't wait to start it. (Linda Hall)

Actress Louise Brealey speaks about her bookish childhood in an interview on WhatsOnStage.

2. What made you want to become an actor and subsequently a playwright?
No one else in my family is an actor, but both my parents are very funny and my dad's a salesman, which is basically the same thing. I always wanted to act when I was little but I wasn't a very confident child so I never did all that putting on shows for my parents stuff; we didn't have a dressing-up box. I actually think I first fell in love with acting because I was a bookish little thing and I'd always get completely lost in the story and imagine myself as the characters of everything I read. So I spent my childhood being Jo in Little Women, or Anne of Green Gables, or Jane Eyre, or Elizabeth Bennett. (Rosie Bannister)

IndieWire's Thompson on Hollywood celebrates the 50th anniversary of the film Alphaville by Jean-Luc Godard.

I especially admire Godard's essays on Hitchcock and Hawks. Godard brings into the discussion philosophy, Charlotte Brontë, Carl Dreyer, Abel Gance, Andre Malraux, Goethe, Luis Bunuel, Dostoevsky, and German Expressionism. He was the first to put Hitchcock in the same class with Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. His review of Hitchcock’s "Strangers on a Train" takes off beyond analyzing the film to a discourse on what film is, and how the filmmaker achieves his effects: “Certainly the camera defies reality, but does not evade it; if it enters the present, it is to give it the style it lacks.” (Anne Thompson)

Yesterday also marked what would have been Orson Welles's 100th birthday and many sites list Jane Eyre among his best films as an actor.

This is how Games Radar + describes Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell the novel by Susanna Clarke and recently also a miniseries.

If you're not familiar with the book, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell follows the only two actual magicians left in 19th century England, exploring why practical magic has fallen out of use and some of the consequences of trying to bring it back. Like if Wuthering Heights was about wizards instead of vague ghost metaphors. (Connor Sheridan)

Confessions of a sports writer in The Wall Street Journal:

I am embarrassed to admit, at this stage of my life, that I have not read all of the Great Books. Not even most of them. I have read “Moby Dick,” I am pretty sure, and “The Sun Also Rises” (that’s the one with the bulls, right?), but I confess I have not read “The Sound and the Fury,” “Wuthering Heights,” “The Iliad” and loads of other essential literature I was assigned but somehow found a way to blow off. (Jason Gay)

Columbus Alive has an article on the solo debut of singer Dorthia Cottrell.

“[Music] is all I ever wanted to do. I never really had any friends in high school, and never really went to any parties. Well, I went to no parties and I had no friends, more specifically,” Cottrell said. “I would sit in my room … and I would record myself playing all these weird songs I wrote about ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Crime and Punishment’ and things I was reading in my English class. I don't know if I was good at the time, but it always felt like I could be good at it. It consumed me. It was all I ever thought about it.” (Andy Downing)

Princess Charlotte is still in the news and so is her name. There's a Brontëite in the Telegraph:

The feminine form of “Charles,” Charlotte means “petite,” and was therefore perhaps a fitting name for the slight of form Charlotte Brontë, the author and arguably the most famous Charlotte to date. (Gordon Rayner and Danny Boyle)

Travel StackChange has an on-going questiona bout Top Withens and surroundings;  The Pink Bee reviews Wuthering Heights 1939. Mallory Ortberg, author of Texts from Jane Eyre, explains how to cast Jane on The Toast.

Finally, an alert for today on Italian TV:

Su RaiMovie, alle 21.15 il film drammatico "Cime tempestose", con Juliette Binoche. Il protagonista, Heathcliff viene accolto nella propria dimora dal patriarca della famiglia Earnshaw e si innamora della ribelle Catherine. (Bergamo News)