The Squeee

Want to read Jane Eyre -related books? Why not join in the 2013 Books of Eyre Challenge , hosted by Amber at The Musings of ALMYBNENR ? :) I think it sounds like a splendid idea. The challenge runs all year long, and you can set your own level of participation: Orphan: 5 books Student: 10 books Teacher/Governess: 15 books Mr./Mrs. Rochester: 20 books Last year, I reviewed five of these kind of books, and I have at least two that needs reviewing at the moment. As I have made it a life mission of sorts to read as many Jane Eyre spin-offs as possible (the whole thing about needing to have ISBN number is brilliant - I might just have to borrow that description), I was going to say I won't be taking part, but maybe I actually should. I mean, why not? I'm doing it already, but under the banner of Everything Eyre . Maybe then I'll get around to finish reading the ones I'm reading at the moment, not to mention actually reviewing those that are waiting to be reviewe...

Ah, sometimes Facebook ads are actually useful. It showed me a t-shirt site called Meanfellas.com, which I immedately had to investigate: Lowood t-shirt Lowood Charity School. :D It's £15 (or more, depending on size/style) and comes in white or pink. Free shipping to anywhere in the world.

Through PeriodDramas.com , we learn that Haddon Hall (outside Bakewell in Derbyshire), the Thornfield of no less than three different Jane Eyre adaptations ( Gainsbourg/Hurt 1996 , Wilson/Stephens 2006 , Wasikowska/Fassbender 2011 ), is to have an exhibition of the costumes of said productions. Last year, they displayed costumes from the 2011 production, but now they're getting ones from the previous two as well. Yay!! If it was just the 2011 costumes, I wouldn't be that tempted to go - been there, seen those - but with the other two adaptations as well ... awwww, I'll totally have to. Just imagine, seeing Rochester's deep green coat ... wow. Also, the 2011 costumes are incredible : Mrs. Fairfax's apron. I loved it in the film. It's even more wonderful to behold in real life.

Item 9 in the Christmas Giveaway is a 2-disc Region 2 DVD set of Jane Eyre (2006 ), courtesy of the Daily Mail , which as a newspaper isn't worth the paper it's printed on, but comes in handy here. I already have the DVD of this production, so don't need it. Got it when I bought a selection of these newspaper giveaway DVDs on eBay and have been hoarding them ever since. :)

This is totally lifted off a flyer I picked up when I was on said tour this Saturday just gone. It's a fun event, and you get to learn a lot not just about Jane Eyre '11, but also bits about '96 and '06, as they were all using Haddon Hall for Thornfield Hall. Tickets are selling fast, and this is the last of these you can attend this year! My recommendation would be to dress warm, but not too warm, as you do walk around quite a bit. Costumes from Jane Eyre '11 on display at Haddon Hall Sunday 23 October 2011 10:30 am If you would like to know more about what happens when a film crew takes over Haddon Hall, why not join us for our special "Behind the Scenes" tour? Stroll through the house and find out which rooms were used in which scene. Haddon Staff, involved with the filming, will share anecdotes and trade secrets with you. There is also the opportunity to visit parts of the house not normally open to visitors. Enjoy this unique experience f...

If you would like to see some footage from See Film Differently's Jane Eyre premiere at Haddon Hall, there's a little film here: Both the Squeeze and I completely managed to evade being captured on film, apparently, despite me wearing my "Team Edward Rochester" t-shirt. Nice to see the bit with Cary Fukanaga (doesn't he kinda remind you of Johnny Depp?), as that seemed to be cut off when we were actually there, due to some terrible lag in the system. Also, there's an event on next Saturday, which I'm hoping to attend. And yes, I know, I still need to type up about the screening. Things got in the way, I'm afraid. Considering making it a Sunday Matinée post, which means it's still a few weeks in the future, as it's currently occupied by the German travel diary. Or maybe I'll reschedule. We'll see. P.S. If you want to live in a place that inspired Charlotte Brontë, Thornton Hall in Thornton near Bradford is up for sale , for th...

In the news today: The most recent adaptation of Jane Eyre was number three in the UK box office during its opening weekend. Well done! I think it was really well done considering out of the four cinemas in Nottingham (that I know of, anyway), only one is actually showing it - Showcase. Broadway will be showing it, but not until the end of the month. If that's the case here, what's it like in other parts of the country? #3 is well done! :) Keira Knightley, Jude Law and Aaron Johnson are billed to star in next year's adaptation of Anna Karenina . Haven't we known about Keira Knightley playing Anna Karenina for months now? Jude Law is to be Karenin and Johnson Vronsky. Speaking of adaptations, Joanna Trollope is apparently set to write a modern day re-make of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility . It's set to publish late 2013 and is a part of HarperFiction's attempts at giving all the Austen novels an update. I'm just slightly puzzled as to why this...

In the review of Jane Eyre (2011) , I mentioned that there were a few things I would have a separate rant about. This is that post. It will contain lots of spoilers, it will be ranting. Readers of a delicate disposition might want to look away now, even though I don't use the F word once. This is in some sort of chronological order and might be edited if I can think of more things after posting. Ready? Here we go.

So, we finally made it to North Lees Hall outside Hathersage in north Derbyshire. ( Previous post about this day is here , by the way.) We drove up to the house, parked on the side of the field where other people were parked, tried to get an overturned sign to stay up in the wind (it wouldn't), and walked up to the old house. First impressions, aside from fangirly glee of being somewhere where Charlotte Brontë had been and been so inspired by, was that the house itself is rather on the small side, but wow, the views of the Derbyshire hills from there are extraordinary! How's this for a view? The reason behind going to North Lees Hall in the first place is of course that it's one of the buildings that inspired Charlotte Brontë to write about Thornfield in Jane Eyre . In fact, the description of Thornfield Hall does ring true with North Lees (which also, as it happens, was the ancestral home of the Eyre family), with a tower and turrets and the surroundings, nestled...

I love the richness of detail in Jane Eyre . Charlotte Brontë weaves Jane’s inner life and her outer surroundings into a tapestry of emotion, physical sensation and contrast. The themes that run throughout the story are both subtle and strong, resulting in a coming-of-age / gothic horror / love story / portrait of integrity that I return to again and again. One theme is that of insight and blindness. Brontë describes many of her characters’ eyes in great detail. Take this quiz to see if you can match the eyes with the character. Who has:

[Grazie, BrontëBlog !] Thought it might be good with an update for the release dates of Jane Eyre - the ones that are still ahead of us! 7 September 2011 Belgium France 9 September 2011 Ireland United Kingdom 16 September 2011 Sweden 22 September 2011 Netherlands 7 October 2011 Italy (not confirmed) Poland 13 October 2011 Hungary 1 December 2011 Germany 2 December 2011 Spain 9 December 2011 Turkey 23 February 2012 Denmark The poster above is from Italy, by the way. I quite like it. A mix of the first picture released on the interwebs as well as the European poster. Still prefer the European poster, though. I also feel really sorry for our friends in Denmark. That's almost a whole YEAR after it came out in North America!

Jane Eyre '11 premieres here in the UK on Friday 9 September. Leading up to that, I'm clearing the schedule for an all-out Jane Eyre week! If you have something you'd like to contribute about Jane Eyre - be it The Book, derivative books or screen adaptations - between now and 10 September, feel free to get in touch, as I'm looking for guest bloggers for this event. Posts about Jane Eyre '11 in one way or another are preferable, seeing as how that's the film that's coming out, but I'm not picky. After all, it's the same great story regardless. :) Please send in your post(s) by email to dishmastah (at) traxy (dot) net or by Facebook message to Traxy Thornfield . If you could included a brief summary of who you are and where you're from, that would be helpful. Doesn't have to be personal. I'm planning to spend tomorrow camped out in Bakewell. We'll see how that turns out. Hopefully, in the week that follows, I'll have mo...

This post would not have been made if it wasn't for BrontëBlog who alerted me to their existance, and hacsince1991 on YouTube for uploading them! It's SOME deleted scenes (NOT all of them!) from Jane Eyre (2011), which comes out on Region 1 DVD (North America) on 16 August. Us Brits still have to wait for the cinema release, which is one month today! The wait is almost over ...

Thanks to BrontëBlog for the tip! Here's the UK poster for the 2011 version of Jane Eyre : (With hugs to The Guardian ) I like it, I really do. I like the colours and in general I just find it more appealing than the US one, to be honest. Beautiful photos and beautiful artwork. They've also released a UK version of the trailer, which is different from the US one! They seem to do a lot more talking, and it summarises the book as well.

First things first: They're making Good Omens into something for the telly. A miniseries, hopefully, as opposed to a TV movie. It's due in 2013, according to IMDb . If you don't know what Good Omens is, you've missed a terribly great novel, written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It's about a young Antichrist, an angel and a demon who have decided humanity isn't all that bad actually, and Armageddon. Or prevention thereof. And it's hysterically funny. One of my favourite books. Secondly, news are that BBC have commissioned four new episodes of Dirk Gently . Hopefully this time, they'll make it completely standalone from the novels, so we won't have the problems that the pilot had . Fingers crossed! If you follow me on Twitter , you may have already noticed I changed my username slightly the other day. It used to be the_squeee , it's now TheSqueee (case optional). I thought back when I got the account, the version without the underscore...

We interrupt the regular broadcast of FanstRAvaganza 2 in order to have a rant about some mucking fuppets I just came across online and want to scream about for a bit. If you're the sort of person whose religious prejudices get in the way of, oh I dunno, education , you should really give this post a miss, or you're likely to be tremendously offended. Don't say I didn't warn you. The first one, Jane Eyre: Oblivious or Needy? tries to make some kind of point of Jane being oblivious for not realising there was something shady going on at Thornefield. "No one can be that oblivious" it says, and also goes on to claim that Jane was needy for ... St. John wanting to marry her? Does not compute? How can Jane be blamed for being needy when it's not as if she encouraged St. John's attentions and in fact, when he asked her to marry him, she flat out refused? If she was needy, surely she would have accepted his proposal and ignored his jibe about her being ma...

Originally posted 25 January 2010 on a different blog. Wow, that header sounds like a 50s/60s band! :) Work has begun on a second scene, set in Edward Rochester's childhood, where we get to meet not only him but also his older brother Rowland. From what I can tell, there's no names given for their parents, nor does it say what the age difference between the brothers is, or indeed what Rowland eventually died of. This means, I suppose, I'm at liberty to make these things up as I go along, which is both exciting and scary. I want to be following Charlotte Brontë's original text as closely as possible, so if I do come across a reference that actually mentions these things, I'll go by the book. Now, I don't think there are that many years between the boys. Doubt it's more than five. Haven't exactly decided on what, but on the other hand, I haven't even decided how old Edward is supposed to be in the scene, or exactly what happened, but I have an in...

Originally posted 25 January 2010 on a different blog. Edward is about 38 in the book, so that means he got married at 23, which I think explains a lot. He was still very young, and it explains why he was so quick to become besotted with Bertha Mason, even though he was never allowed to be on his own with her until they were married. He thought he was in love because she was so beautiful. It's a heavy burden to lay on a young person, forcing him to marry someone who it turns out is known to be insane, as insanity runs in the family. Do I think Edward was in the wrong for bringing Bertha to England? No, I think he was mistaken. To be perfectly honest, I think he should've dumped her back on Jamaica and gone back to England alone; however, I understand why he did it. He's not an awful person, he has a big heart, and even though he technically can't stand her, she is his wife, and as such, he feels obliged to take care of her. After all, they are married. Perhaps he se...

Originally posted 23 January 2010 on a different blog. I recently read that new writers often find third person narrative to be very difficult, because they are more accustomed to first person, and writing things from their own perspective rather than someone else's. While this might be true in some cases, perhaps a lot, it is not true for me. I struggle with it immensely. It's uncomfortable and weird. Most of the stories I have ever written, regardless of which age I was at the time, have been in third person, either in the mind of one character or switching between them, or omnipotent. This whole "I", "me" and "my" business feels unnatural, somehow. Not sure why. Okay, blogging and letters and that sort of thing I have no issue with writing in the first person (obviously), but stories are a problem. It doesn't flow as easily. There might be many reasons for it. First of all, I'm definitely more used to third person narratives, but eve...

Originally posted 23 January 2010 on a different blog. Handwritten draft, exactly as it was written on paper, so no corrections more than the ones on the paper itself. Just typing it down makes me want to change stuff around, add things, remove repetitions, and realise that there are a few instances of where the text gets rather confusing, or even goes to innuendo town...