Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Sitting with Jane Eyre, Again

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

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I have read and reread Jane Eyre many times in my life. As a child, teenager, young woman. This time the book invited me to reread her while I was on a trip to London. I was sitting in what felt to me (40 something somewhat dowdy professor-lady) like an impossibly cool art/bar/vibey space in Peckham that thankfully had bookshelves with used books available to read. With a glass of wine I spotted Jane Eyre, scooped her up, and found a spot in a corner […]

Reader, she married him. I wish she didn’t.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

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Maybe I would have liked this book more if I had read it as a teenager, when I could see myself as Jane Eyre – a plucky young woman who is so intelligent and virtuous that a man the narrative tells us is her soulmate loves her despite her plainness and the social gulf between them.   Probably not though.  Even as a teen I would have rolled my eyes at the pantomime villains of Jane’s childhood, locking her in a ghostridden room for the crime […]

“I am not an angel, and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself” Charlotte Bronte

Bronte by Manuela Santoni

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I was given a readers copy of this graphic novel. I was curious about it due to the interesting cover, and I like biographies told in graphic novels. And even if it was going to be a story/memoir like book, and not a “true” biography, I still thought it was going to be informative. I finally picked it up because I was looking for something easier to get into. I needed a break from the mess of novels that I had found myself tangled in […]

“Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master-something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself.” – Charlotte Bronte

Heathcliff Redux: A Novella and Stories by Lily Tuck

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We have a Heathcliff problem. We fantasize on the regular about a brooding hulk smoldering just out of view. He’s there- he’s part of the nature of the area, and we are going to conquer that nature. We are going to nurture the brutish man. We are going to fix him, and he’s going to rescue us. Except, we know the truth. We are going to ruin ourselves trying to capture him, and it isn’t going to change him in the slightest. Our narrator in Heathcliff […]

A girl and her book

Charlotte Bronte before Jane Eyre by Glynnis Fawkes

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While an interesting story, Charlotte Bronte before Jane Eyre felt like something was missing. It is more of a few panels/pages hitting highlights of Bronte’s life than a full-on biography. In other words, if you need a biography to do a paper on, this is something fun to help you summarize, but one should not to take it as your only source.  Glynnis Fawkes is obvious a fan of Jane Eyre and Bronte, but you do not have to be to appreciate what happens to […]

Reader, this was an absolute delight

Reader, I Married Him by Tracy Chevalier (editor)

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Reader, we all know how we feel about Jane Eyre. We also know how we feel about that fateful sentence: Reader, I married him. This collection of 21 stories, created to celebrate Charlotte Bronte’s 200th birthday in 2016 and written by an all-female team of authors, all have strong feelings on the matter as well, and these stories run the gamut from the reverent to the satirical. This collection is a jewelry box in your grandmother’s attic full of treasure and cheap pieces alike, and […]



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