The Squeee

Sadly, they're not real... but oh (wo)man, they should be! :D

The people we bought the house off had left behind an empty photo frame. Possibly because it was a bit wonky. I finally found a use for it, the other day! :) When the Squeeze and I went to London in mid-March, we popped in to the National Portrait Gallery (I insisted, because I really wanted to see the Brontë portraits in real life). You weren't allowed to take pictures there (boo!), so I had to settle for getting some postcards instead, and the frame came in really useful now - so, from the top: Charlotte Brontë (by George Richmond), Emily Brontë (by Branwell Brontë), the Brontë sisters (also by Branwell), and a self-portrait of Jane Austen. All except the Richmond one were on display at the museum. Maybe that one was as well but we didn't see it. So there you have it, my collection of inspirational female authors! :) Now I just have to figure out where to put it... haha.

Isn't this a great picture, btw? It's so like the original! Another Brontë-based blogging event/theme! This time, it's not a challenge or anything, just a collection of bloggers who like posting on the subject of the Brontës and their works and have a collective squee, which sounds like a good plan. The bloggers behind it are Beth and Melissa at Eggplantia and they say you can participate even if you're not a blogger. Posting about the Brontës is something I'm likely to continue doing after Laura's Brontë Challenge is through, even if  it will most likely not be as often. Or, it might be that I'll post more over at E•F•R rather than here. We shall see. Either way, I intend to keep reading, keep watching, keep listening, keep writing and keep blogging about these remarkable sisters and their wonderful works. :) P.S. If anyone would prefer an Austen-Along, Beth & Melissa assures us there will be one of those as well, just keep your eyes open.

Over at Laura's Reviews , there's a challenge for 2010: read/watch anything by or about the Brontë sisters between January and June. Between three and six things. Sounds easy enough! For more info, and to officially sign up to the challenge, see All About the Brontes Challenge 2010 . I have eight Jane Eyre adaptations that can be watched (and obsessed over, naturally), two to listen to (have started one of them already, i.e. the one from '91 with Ciarán Hinds as Rochester), and then there's Tenant of Wildfell Hall that I could re-watch, and three Wuthering Heights adaptations. Two I've recently written about, so maybe I'll skip those, just like I'd probably skip Jane Eyre '34 and '83 for the same reason. I've not written about Wuthering Heights the book yet, and I have Agnes Grey still to read... maybe give Jane Eyre another read as well... maybe.

About 50 pages left of the book now, and have been re-watching Wuthering Heights '09 ... and formed a new opinion. WH'78, frightfully dull as it was, must be the one version closest to the book. Well, except that the book fails to be be dull. The book is rather engaging and not as tedious to read as, oh, Jane Eyre . Emily is more to-the-point than her sister, doesn't go off rambling in purple-tinted prose about stuff that doesn't have an impact on the story or characters. She also doesn't show off her French skills time and time again, although instead, she writes in dialect, which is only marginally easier to understand than the French. WH'98, what I remember of it, is also at least semi-true to the book, but not quite to the same extent.

It's that time again - a remake of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights , about a raving psychopath Heathcliff and his confused love affair with his foster sister Cathy. I honestly don't get the appeal of Heathcliff just because he's a proper psycho. I've not yet read the book (I have it, though) and I've only seen one adaptation so far ( 1998 TV version with Robert Cavanah and Orla Brady - and Matthew Macfadyen!) but I wasn't impressed. Still, have the harddrive recorder set for Sunday and Monday to see if this does a better job or if it's still just... dark and weird. Well, if it's not good, I've also set the timer for " Frozen " on BBC2 night to Monday. :D