Readers' 100 favourite books

After critics and authors picked their top 100 books, The Guardian has now compiled a list of 100 books based on its readers' suggestions.

Adaptation is another driver to widespread popularity: as well as Tolkien, it powers the enduring popularity of Jane Austen, readers’ most nominated writer overall, even if Emma slipped behind a host of modern novels, including Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Blood Meridian – your preferred Cormac McCarthy novel at No 28 (although The Road still ranks at 80). And perhaps the timing of film releases also provides a clue as to why Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights places above her sister Charlotte’s Jane Eyre. (Alex Clark)

The Brontës' books on the list of readers' favourites:

[Tied at #26 with Charles Dickens's Bleak House] 

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë

Sarah Owen, Cheshire, 54: “The first book I ever read through the night and went to work with no sleep the next day. The sun was coming up as I finished it. All of the emotions: the outrage at her treatment as a child, the hope as she made her way into the world, the repressed longing, the romantic tension, the sting of betrayal – fantastic.” [...]

[Tied at #14 with Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall] 

Wuthering Heights

by Emily Brontë

Élise Camilla, Oxford, bookshop worker: “Gothic. Shakespearean. Dramatic. Beautiful. I’ve never loved a novel as much as this one … It changed the fabric of my being at 15 and I’ve never looked back.”

No Wide Sargasso Sea on this list and no Anne Brontë either.

The Telegraph and Argus features a performance inspired by Charlotte Brontë, which is to return to Thornton today:

“Charlotte Brontë: Senseless Trash,” created by artist Fran Bundey, will be performed on Saturday, June 6, starting at Sapgate Gardens.

The 30-minute outdoor production blends theatre, sound and storytelling into an immersive experience that guides audiences through a creative interpretation of the author’s life.

Ms Bundey described the piece as difficult to categorise, combining multiple art forms into one experience.

She said: “It’s sort of part theatre, part found art, part tour, and with a little bit of silent disco thrown in there as well,”

The performance is designed as a promenade show, with the audience moving through the space alongside the performer while listening through silent disco headphones.

Ms Bundey explained: “It’s an outdoor promenade show, so I walk around with the audience… and we do a little journey through wherever we are.”

The title ‘Senseless Trash’ comes directly from Charlotte Brontë’s own writing, reflecting a moment of self-doubt early in her life.

Ms Bundey said she was struck by a letter Brontë wrote after receiving discouraging feedback from poet laureate Robert Southey.

She said: “[Charlotte] says she felt a painful heat rise to her face and that the first letter she sent to him was ‘all senseless trash from beginning to end’,”

The show imagines the journey between that moment and Brontë’s eventual decision to publish her work, exploring how the celebrated author overcame those doubts.

The performance combines historical storytelling with modern influences, featuring field recordings from the Yorkshire moors alongside contemporary music.

Audiences can expect to hear “the howling winds at Top Withins” and “the tranquil trickling of nearby waterfalls”, as well as unexpected musical moments. (Jess Blissitt)

U.S. Catholic thinks that 'In Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights,’ agency is left unexplored'.

Not every love story is a romance.

Some love stories—the ones rooted in reality and humanity—are also stories of the cultural fissures in a particular historic moment. They may also show us the ways lovers can sometimes clumsily harm each other, while they barely understand themselves.

By reducing Wuthering Heights to a mere romance, Emerald Fennell’s recent film cheats us out of wrestling with the actual issues Emily Brontë put on the page in 1847. These issues—generational trauma, class and race divides, entrenched gender expectations, and abuse from people who love us—are still acutely relevant today. [...]

If ever two characters loved each other despite personality disorders and social boundaries, it’s Heathcliff and Cathy. These people are knotted up in dysfunctions we would readily name today: narcissism, dismissive avoidance, codependency. Their story is disturbing, haunting, and beloved because of the flat-out fierceness these two characters have for each other, the consuming obsession and cruel behavior they share, and the exquisite violence of their passion for each other.

Fennell’s version diminishes a tale of tortured personalities shaped by hardship, class divides, and probably racism. (Brontë describes Heathcliff as being dark and swarthy, and he’s called a “Gipsy”; that explains a great deal about why his friendship and eventual romance with Cathy were so offensive to their society.)

In Fennell’s film, the tall, handsome (and white) Jacob Elordi portrays Heathcliff—which seems especially odd; Shazad Latif, a British-Pakistani actor, is cast as Edgar Linton. Margot Robbie, however, is convincingly willful as Cathy, as merciless and difficult to warm to on screen as the character is in the novel.

Where Brontë critiqued the artificial cultural and social barriers people invent and insert between one another—sources of much human pain and suffering—the film neatly lops that out of the conversation.

Heathcliff’s brutish rage at the injustice of the poverty he’s been dealt is simply missing here—though that’s part of what fueled him to leave Cathy, go out into the world, make himself into a wealthy gentleman, and return to destroy the prosperous men around him. With this element removed, the narrative loses much of its power. We don’t get to see Heathcliff at his wildest, exacting revenge on the class system that dismissed him and kept him from wedding Cathy. Load-bearing plot elements and essential characters are carved out of the narrative, turning the grand, searing story into a dime-a-dozen romance.

There’s none of the book’s redemption here. No scene of Cathy and Heathcliff’s ghosts, wandering the moors together. No tale of Cathy’s daughter finding a more peaceful love with Hareton, who is expunged from the film entirely. No Heathcliff agonizing in guilt after Cathy dies.

Set design is extraordinary in places (the fireplace mantel of carved hands!), and costumes—though thuddingly symbolic (we get it, she always wears red, she bleeds to death)—are stunning. The scene of Cathy crossing the moors in her voluminous wedding dress and veil lifted by the wind is a spectacle.

Cathy seizes what power is available to her—the power of a woman to attract and use men. Far more vicious in the book, here she manipulates the attention of a rich man, denying herself the man she really loves. She breaks her own heart because of who she wants to be in life. At the same time, she exerts as much agency as her society grants her.

Brontë’s story expresses a feminism of sorts, however twisted. But it’s a feminism Fennell leaves unexplored. Cathy has her own justifiable rage at her limited options in life, but the film leaves that perspective in the background.

Cathy’s sort of feminism was surely central for Brontë, who created female characters pushing back against the Victorian ideals of feminine behavior that bound the author herself. (She initially published the book under a male pseudonym to bypass 19th-century prejudice against female authors.)

She and her sisters Charlotte and Anne created imaginary worlds for their own entertainment, driven by their isolated lives on the bleak and remote moors. Emily wrote the book for herself, and published it only after Charlotte urged her to do so—because they needed the money. One of the most powerful love stories ever, written by a woman for the pleasure of scribbling it down, just for herself.

This should be a story about damaged people loving each other savagely and without pause, finding what’s lovable and deserving in each other, despite their many flaws and obstacles. The film should have been an exploration of human passion and what binds us to one another, even in unhealthy ways. Instead, it’s much less. (Pamela Hill Nettleton)

New England Times reports that it's going to be a Wuthering solstice in Glen Innes.

The Australian Standing Stones will be awash with red and black this winter solstice as locals gather to channel their inner Kate Bush for Glen Innes’ first-ever Wuthering Heights Day.

Organised by Shimmy in the Glen’s Helen Tucker and Lisa Wilson, the event invites people of all ages and abilities to recreate the iconic dance from Kate Bush’s 1978 hit Wuthering Heights in one of the region’s most distinctive locations.

While Wuthering Heights Day events have become a global phenomenon, this will be the first time Glen Innes has joined the fun.

“Lisa and I have often seen other people in other places doing it regularly,” Ms Tucker said.

“We have plenty of friends that do it and we were like, ‘We must do that one year, we must do that one year.'”

The idea gained momentum after a conversation with Standing Stones Management Board member John Rhys Jones.

“I said, ‘We’re thinking we might do that this year,’ and he just jumped for joy,” Ms Tucker said.

“He was like, ‘Yes, love it.’ And he said, ‘Please, can we do it with solstice?'”

The answer was an easy one.

“So we decided we would go with it.”

The quirky celebration traces its roots back to the United Kingdom, where a group of fans gathered in 2013 to recreate Bush’s famous music video in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record.

“Essentially it started in 2013 when a group in the UK decided that they would reenact Kate Bush’s dance from Wuthering Heights for a Guinness World Record of the most number of people dressed as Kate,” Ms Tucker said.

From there, the idea spread around the globe.

“Everybody just thought it sounded like such a good idea that it grew and it goes around the world.”

Ms Tucker believes the singer’s enduring popularity is helping attract a new generation of fans.

“I think people of a certain age certainly remember when the video came out and that it was a big deal,” she said.

“But I think the fact that her Running Up That Hill song was in Stranger Things, and of course with the Wuthering Heights movie coming out this year as well, it’s kind of even the younger people know about it.”

For those worried they might not have the dance moves, organisers have a simple message: don’t be.

“Not at all,” Ms Tucker said when asked if participants need dancing experience.

“We’ve also got some people who have already said, ‘I’m not up for the dancing, but I want to get dressed up and come anyway.’

“So it’s completely up to people as to how active they are.”

Participants are encouraged to wear anything red and black and simply enjoy being part of the spectacle.

“We’re just encouraging as many people as possible to come along and just to wear anything red and black so that they can be part of the colour.”

Free dance classes will be held at Glen Innes Town Hall in the lead-up to the event, with sessions scheduled for Tuesday, June 16 and Thursday, June 18 at 5pm, and Saturday, June 20 at 10am. Participants can attend one class or all three, and online tutorials are also available for those wanting to practise at home.

The festivities will follow the Standing Stones’ winter solstice activities, including the solar noon ceremony, before dancers take centre stage at midday.

“My plan is that we’ll actually do the dance and then we’ll probably play the Running Up That Hill song and run up the hill,” Ms Tucker said.

“And then come back down again, maybe take a few photos and then probably do the dance again.”

With organisers also hoping to capture drone footage of the colourful gathering against the backdrop of the Standing Stones, the event promises to be one of the more memorable ways to mark the shortest day of the year.

As Ms Tucker puts it: “We just thought it was a bit of fun.”

Wuthering Heights Day will be held at the Australian Standing Stones on Saturday, June 21, with dancing beginning at midday. Everyone is welcome. (Penelope Shaw)