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Friday, July 24, 2015

We read about an intriguing proposal in Keighley News:
The Brontës may have been around long before international air travel, but that hasn’t deterred Yorkshire residents from suggesting renaming Leeds Bradford Airport in their honour.
One in six respondents recommended renaming the regional airport "Brontë Airport" in a survey involving more than 1,000 local people. (...)
The Brontës of Haworth family achieved the number one position in the poll for Leeds Bradford Airport - indicating that Yorkshire people view the family name as being most likely to persuade overseas visitors to fly directly into the county.
Ant Clarke Cowell, communications director at Holiday Extras, said: (...)
”It’s amazing to see the Brontës are the number one choice for residents in Yorkshire. Their legacy is already a huge driver for tourism in the region and it’s great to see this recognised in this survey.” (Miran Rahman)
Evan Rail from the New York Times is touring Yorkshire looking for the best pubs and beers. In Haworth he finds that and something more:
The long hike across the West Yorkshire moors passed over hills peppered with scrubby grass, through fields of heather and over jagged rocks and gurgling streams. Along the way I’d been severely scolded by more than one chattering red grouse, and ignored by innumerable flocks of grazing sheep. Eventually I’d made it all the way to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse whose setting was said to have been the inspiration for Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” Sunburned and tired after the long walk, I needed refreshment.
I found it in the Fleece, an old pub in the Brontës’ Yorkshire hometown, Haworth: a half-pint (9.6 ounces) of Golden Best, a mild ale from the local brewer Timothy Taylor. (...)
I’d found Haworth almost impossibly pretty, both in my walks on the surrounding moors and in the village itself. Like much of the area, it has quieted down since its Victorian-era heyday, when textile mills flourished in Yorkshire. Since then, Haworth has become a storybook vacation destination, best known for its connection to the Brontës, its old stone cottages and pubs like the Fleece.
The Telegraph's My favourite books section continues questioning writers about their... favourite books: Sue Townsend chooses Jane Eyre and Jeanette Winterson chooses Wuthering Heights.

The Independent interviews the writer Namwali Serpell:
Which fictional character most resembles you?
Physically, Micah Wilkins from Justine Larbalestier's Liar; emotionally, Marianne Dashwood from Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility; spiritually, the eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre; and also, unfortunately, Briony Tallis from Ian McEwan's Atonement.
Bucks Free Press lists several Gothic literature classics:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
A passionate story about the wild, uncontrollable love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. But if you're expecting a happy ending, well, as Tyrion Lannister says, you've come to the wrong place.
The setting becomes another character in this novel, the brooding moors and dark, stormy skies reflecting the troubling inner emotions of the protagonists. This book is often compared to Jane Austen’s novels, but Brontë’s is so much better, with so much more passion and fire than anything Austen ever wrote. Characters are brooding and mysterious, and the intriguing tale unfolds with fantastic suspense and tragic consequences. (Kelly Pells)
Slough & South Buck Observer reviews the play Hetty Feather at Theatre Royal Windsor, London:
Meanwhile, Phoebe Thomas’ endearing portrayal of the charismatic Hetty bears a striking resemblance to a young Jane Eyre, displaying much of the courage, hope and feistiness that made Jane such a memorable character. (Amy Horsfield)
Exhibition News on the rise of the geeks, zombie subculture:
This has been helped by the likes of The Walking Dead and other zombie programmes that people like to sink their teeth into. Have you read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? How about Alice in Zombieland or Wuthering Heights and a Werewolf? There’s even the Zombie Survival Guide. (Annie Byrne)
PopMatters publishes an excerpt of Unbuttoning America. A Biography of Peyton Place by Ardis Cameron:
Sex upped the ante. “Reading, dear reader, is a sexual and sexually divided practice,” the literary scholar Cora Kaplan writes as she sets out to probe her compulsive reading habits when, as a teenager in the 1950s, fiction became an especially powerful force in her life and “narrative pleasure lost its innocence.” She confesses, “Peyton Place, Jane Eyre, Bleak House, Nana: in my teens, they were all the same to me, part of my sexual and emotional initiation, confirming, constructing my femininity, making plain the psychic form of sexual difference.”
Blueinartinfo interviews the author Sophie McManus:
We loved “The Unfortunates” because it’s in many ways a big, juicy, so-called “social novel” about The Way We Live Now — or at least, you know, the way Some People Live Now... but it’s also tremendously entertaining and imminently readable. What are some other books you might recommend we tackle next this summer that might strike a similar balance?
Have you read “Bleak House”? “Middlemarch”? I haven’t. I am ashamed. One of the greatest social novels of all time (though slim, lonely, weird, not at all big in the usual sense) is “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys. I based a good part of my book on Edith Wharton’s “House of Mirth.” I am very excited to read “The Sellout” by Paul Beatty.
Margaret Locke talks with the writer Phyllis Duncan:
What’s your favorite romance novel of all time, and why?
(...) My all-time favorite romance is, without question, Jane Eyre. My parents sent me to a Christian school for a couple of years which reminded me of Lowood (and I’m not being figurative), so I identified with the young Jane’s tribulations deeply. (Hmm, perhaps the start of my interest in reversing injustice?) That unlikely love story between Jane and Rochester is timeless and gives you hope for a happy-ever-after. A lot of what I write doesn’t have a happy ending, so I always go back to Jane Eyre. I’ve probably re-read it a dozen or more times in my life, and I’m sure there are more re-readings of it to come.
Orlando Books Examiner interviews another author, E.S. Renfield:
Michael Pang: (...) Who are your favorite authors and how have they influenced your writing?
Elizabeth: My favorite authors include Anne and Charlotte Brontë, John Green, and Felix Palma. What I liked about Anne and Charlotte were their strong female leads and I think every book that I write seems to have a strong female lead.
And one more author, Kay Kendall (not the actress, of course) on Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers:
What’s the best book you’ve ever read?
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I don’t often reread books, but that is one I’ve read countless times and have watched every cinematic version of it ever made.
The Starving Artist reviews Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë; The World of my Green Heart posts about Re Jane by Patricia Park; Age of the Diary is reading (with some problems) Jane Eyre.

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