A Meditation on Generations

Vogue lists books that you have to read before you're thirty years old:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

Like most people, I first encountered the Brontë sisters in a high school classroom. The spell Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847) cast on me has strengthened with every passing year. The book’s famous romance (the quasi-incestuous bond between the violent Heathcliff and the vain Catherine Earnshaw) actually constitutes less than half of the novel. The greater and more difficult story―the one that draws me to the text over and over―is a meditation on generations: a study of how human faults pass from parents to children and of how we might outlive the sins of the past. Shortly after the book was published, Emily Brontë died at 30 years old. At 25, I’m closer to that age than to the teenage lovers―or to who I was when I first learned of them. The author’s wisdom, to quote her doomed heroine, has run “through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.” (Ian Malone)

Collider has an entire article vindicating Jane Eyre 2006:

The trick to a good Jane Eyre is properly conveying the book's startling intimacy. The meticulous way Brontë centered her protagonist's emotional journey has struck chords for nearly two centuries. The Jane Eyre of 2006 captures Brontë's bleak but grand Gothic landscape then balances it with the searing intimacies demanded by its insular and actively minded protagonist. Humane, moody, sweeping, yet condensing a massive novel into its essential bones, the BBC did it right and did it the best. Leading the charge is Wilson, whose almost-debut performance kickstarts the reputation Luther and The Affair would soon cement; and Toby Stephens, who blazes his way through the Rochester role years before Black Sails and Percy Jackson and the Olympians were a whisper in anyone's minds. (Kelcie Mattison)

Parade lists more than one hundred of the best Romance Books of All Time:

Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart

Romantic suspense doesn’t get any better than Mary Stewart, who rose above the competition thanks to elegant prose and marvelous touches like breaking this novel into nine sections a la nine coaches and sprinkling poetry and other quotes throughout to telling effect. (...) The main characters are “a handsome, darkly brooding master, and a young English governess looking after the 9-year-old heir while probing at least one dark secret. Obvious comparisons are Jane Eyre and even Cinderella.”   

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Which Brontë sister is your favorite? This question can spark a knock-down drag out fight. Some of us, like perhaps Kate Bush, choose Emily Brontë and her only novel, the romantic classic Wuthering Heights. Savannah LeGate of Half Price Books Belle Meade in Nashville heartily agrees. “The novel, to be read with extreme caution, is about the complicated relationships revolving around the Earnshaw and Linton families in Yorkshire,” says bookseller LeGate. “But at its core, it's about the tumultuous relationship between Heathcliff, an orphan, and Catherine Earnshaw, who comes from a wealthy family. Their relationship is incredibly problematic: he’s practically a demon and she’s no better. Still, with lines like ‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same’ it's no wonder their intoxicating dynamic was the blueprint for many iconic fictional couples.”(Michael Giltz)

Inside Edition has a video summarizing some weird book news in the last few years:

These are some weird books. In 2016, comedian Scott Rogowski custom-made unusual book covers to see how New Yorkers on the subway would react. In 2018, a teeny tiny book written by Charlotte Brontë sold at auction for almost a million dollars. In October, a library book 90 years overdue was finally returned to Larchmont Public Library in New York state. Inside Edition Digital’s Andrea Swindall has more.

Shore Daily News and the books of 2023 and the books for 2024:

Her sister, Anna Taylor, chose the Manga Classics Pride of Prejudice and Emma by Jane Austen. Her reading list for 2024 also includes Life with the Walter Boys, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, and Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.

The Observer discusses the recent BBC adaptation of Murder is Easy, and its diverse cast:

Should attempts at ethnic diversity really be confined to “original dramas”? If so, this would exclude non-white actors from a very large chunk of British TV. The nostalgia market is huge. We are a nation that likes to tell ourselves the same stories over and over: Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Dracula, Mary Poppins, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre … a new version of one of these appears about once a year. Make one, and you know millions will watch: this is not the case with every original drama. The classics are also how we sell ourselves abroad. Britain is a relatively open and tolerant country: to insist on an all-white image “for accuracy” would be its own sort of untruth – out of line with our values. (Martha Gill)