The Brontës' Minecraft

Vox has a long and interesting interview with Catherynne Valente who will be publishing The Glass Town Game, 'a middle-grade novel in which the Brontë children are drawn into the imaginary world they created' in September.

Constance Grady, Moving to The Glass Town Game, what attracted you to the Brontës?
Catherynne Valente: Well, I’ve loved the Brontës my whole life. When I was 13 years old, I read Wuthering Heights. I remember it so clearly, sitting in silence reading and finishing the book and looking up and thinking, “Adults are not better at dating than me and my friends. It’s never gonna get any better, and it might be worse. This book is full of crazy people.”
Everybody talks about Wuthering Heights like it’s this romantic story, and it’s not, it’s horrifying! It’s a horror novel, really. And I love Wuthering Heights. Like, my name’s Catherynne; my partner, no lie, is named Heath.
I was 22 when I read Jane Eyre for the first time. I don’t really know why it took me so long. But I went head over heels in love with it. I way overidentified, and I just loved it to absolute bits and pieces.
I started doing some research, ’cause that’s what I do when I love things, and I read a book called How to Suppress Women’s Writing. She talks about Charlotte Brontë, and one of the things she talks about with her is that people assume she only ever wrote the one book, when in fact, the only one of the three sisters that only wrote one book is Emily. Anne wrote two, and Charlotte wrote four.
And then she mentions this juvenilia, which is the first time that I’ve read about it. And it’s fascinating, the juvenilia. Really, it’s exactly what modern kids do with their action figures and Minecraft and all of that. They created this fantasy world for their toys to play in. (Read more)

Evening Standard features Olivia Hetreed, current president of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and looks back on her screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights:

Hetreed’s 2003 adaptation of Tracy Chevalier’s best-selling novel Girl With A Pearl Earring starred Scarlett Johansson opposite Colin Firth as the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Her 2011 version of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights had Kaya Scodelario as Catherine Earnshaw.
The screenwriter said she was drawn to adaptations because of the “rich world” created by the original authors and it was also a way of “sneaking” in lead female characters. She added: “It’s amazing how strong the prejudice still is to central female characters...it’s a huge problem getting independent films funded anyway so an adaptation has an advantage, to a moderate extent. Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary are seen as less of a risk. A man can just be an astronaut, but a woman astronaut has to represent all femaleness.” (Rashid Razaq)

The Times features Ryanair heiress Danielle Ryan. She speaks about Roads, a 'luxury goods empire [she] founded four years ago' and which

publishes glossy coffee-table books on art and fashion, and lovely editions of classic novels and nonfiction books, such as Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby and The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. (Ben Hoyle)

Speaking of business, Financial Times asked readers for 'fiction recommendations for brain-dead bosses' and one of them recommended Jane Eyre:

"One of many management/business lessons it teaches is simple but easily forgotten — know your value! Also, always try to meet your ultimate boss before accepting a job."

GoldDerby has Freddie Highmore and ‘Bates Motel’ showrunner Kerry Ehrin discuss the series finale of Bates Motel.

The final shot of the “Bates Motel” series finale is a tragic one, but also oddly hopeful, as we see the tombstone of Norma and Norman that implies they’re finally together. The inspiration for that image “came from ‘Wuthering Heights,’” reveals Ehrin. “It’s a book that has in a lot of ways influenced the show because it’s about a very unnatural love that these two people have that couldn’t really exist in the real world.”
Ehrin confirms that what is unsaid about that final image is that it’s Dylan (Max Thieriot) who made sure that his brother Norman was buried next to his mother Norma. “And also we thought that what was inscribed on Norman’s tombstone would also be Dylan, out of respect for people who Norman had murdered. That he wanted to make a very simple epitaph and he couldn’t make it too flowery. It’s like a respectful ending for Norman, and in my head that’s what Dylan would have chosen to put on that stone.” (Marcus James Dixon)

BBC News publishes the obituary of the actor Peter Sallis (1921-2017) who played Mr. Shielders in Wuthering Heights 1970. The Film Experience needs your votes on whether you are Team Jane or Team Rochester. Weddings Club has a short article on 'Wild Rustic Bohemian Wedding Inspiration with Macramé Details in Brontë Country'.