Attic Dwellers Unite

The Sunday Times talks about a new podcast by Elizabeth Day, How to Write a Book. We don't know if we have to laugh or cry:

The author and podcast host — who presents the chart-topping How to Fail with Elizabeth Day — is producing a series of “podclasses” that will teach a skill over 12 weeks. The first series, How to Write a Book, will be hosted by the author Sara Collins, the literary agent Nelle Andrew and the publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove. They will share their expertise and give listeners exercises to inspire them. (...)

The group wants the podcast to be accessible, and its references run the gamut from Peaky Blinders to the reality show Love Is Blind and the film Cool Runnings. Day says one of her favourite exchanges is when Lovegrove admits that she has never read a Jane Austen novel and says she hates “English love” because it is so repressed. “I was somewhere the other day and we were getting confused whether it was Jane Austen or the other one, the book,” she says. She means Jane Eyre. Andrew recoils in mock horror. (Rosamund Urwin)

The Telegraph interviews the broadcaster, Peter White 

Peter White and I are discussing the books he is currently reading. As ever, he says, he has several on the go: a crime novel by the Norwegian writer Anne Holt; The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë; (Lucy Denyer)

The New York Times vindicates the works of the Southern writers Harry Crews, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown:

Like the filmmaker Mike Leigh, Harry, Barry and Larry refused to condescend to working-class people. (One character in “Airships” announces, to no one in particular, that he went to junior college, “which is to say, I can read and feel fine things and count.”) Crews and Brown knew what it was to chop cotton; Brown worked factory jobs. They were in absolute sync with the world’s misfits, dissidents and jokers. All three had a mistrust of authority. Few writers have better lived up to Charlotte Brontë’s epic declaration in “Jane Eyre”: “I would always rather be happy than dignified.” (Dwight Garner)

Christian Today recommends 'misunderstood' classical books for Christian book clubs, and makes a very particular reading of Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, modern literary interpretations of Jane Eyre tend to inaccurately impose modern ideas onto it. It is often described as a great feminist work, due to the independence and struggles of the novel's female protagonist. The assumption is that Eyre, and Brontë, disliked Victorian patriarchy just as much as today's women do.

Not so, according to the Ignatius Criticial Edition. "One of the finest novels ever written, Jane Eyre is also one of the most misunderstood masterpieces of world literature," says the series website. "Whereas most modern teaching of the text misreads or misinterprets Charlotte Brontë's devout and profoundly ingrained Christian faith and intentions, this critical edition emphasizes the semi-autobiographical dimension of the novel, exposing feminist critiques of the work as being woefully awry and illustrating Brontë's belief in the hard-earned, hard-learned blessings of sanctity and reverence."

Readers of the work can reflect on questions such as: how should a Christian cope with suffering, with unmet desires, with heartache? How can such trials be used to develop virtue? (Heather Tomlinson)

Let's change religion now. The Jerusalem Post reviews the book The Madwoman in the Rabbi's Attic by Gila Fine. Of course is no surprise to know that

The title references Mr. Rochester’s lunatic wife, Bertha Mason, locked up in the attic of the grand house in which Jane Eyre is employed as governess. 

The Madwoman in the Attic was a 1979 breakthrough book by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar examining Victorian literature from a feminist perspective; Fine’s rabbi’s attic provides the space for her eagle-eyed research into Talmudic females. (Pam Peled)

The Indian Express recovers the story of the singer Talat Mahmood:

The Partition and the formation of East Pakistan massively affected the film industry in Calcutta. Talat’s acting career, too, was tanking. This is when he decided to move to Bombay. Here he met noted composer Anil Biswas who had heard his Bengali songs and gave him one of his career’s biggest hits – the pathos-laden Aye dil mujhe aisi jagah le chal in Arzoo (1950), a film that was brd on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Biswas was impressed with the tremolo effect, the quiver that made Talat unique and according to Biswas, “hard to copy”. Picturised on Dilip Kumar, the pain in the song, of not being able to be with one’s beloved, is palpable as Talat sings Duniyaa mujhe dhudhe magar, Meraa nishaa koi na ho. (Suanshu Khurana)

A former church in Oakworth which may become a three-bed home in The Telegraph & Argus.