Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Jane Eyre

I decided to read Jane Eyre again because it had been years since the last time and the movie was set to come out and I wanted to refresh my drink.
Little did I know that it would be a limited film release and the closest theater so far is in Atlanta. This is not a road trip I would feel comfortable explaining to others.
So...I wait...
In the meantime, I thoroughly enjoyed the book the second time around!
My next door neighbor, whose patio is adjacent to mine, and I read it at the same time and we sat on out on our patios with just a wooden fence between us, contemplating the douchey-ness of St. John.
I tweeted this and Sheila O'Malley tweeted back that he always reminded her of her first boyfriend.
After a few tweets back and forth, we determined that St. John is a high functioning Christian psychopath....or at least that's what I said.

I remember reading something about a controversy in the Bronte family. Now, I can't remember where I read this and doing a quick Google search turned up nothing.
I don't want to speculate because my memory fails me.

I never really appreciated the beauty of Jane Eyre and the characters that Bronte created. I feel like she knew a St. John and a Rochester. As Sheila mentioned, they are so specific. I don't know if you can make up a subtle psychopath like St. John and especially when she rarely left her tiny town during her short life.

Jane Eyre and in turn Charlotte Bronte were quite the feminists. I love this line which holds true and should be true for anyone, even today:
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will."

Thursday, March 10, 2011

World Without End by Ken Follett

Ken Follett screwed up. This should have been titled Book Without End.
This is seriously one big ass tome. I mean good LORD...it just kept going and going and going.
It's a damn good thing it was so interesting.
This is a sequel of sorts to Pillars of Earth (which I haven't read).

From Amazon: World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroad of new ideas--about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice.

To be honest, reading this book was a mistake. I was looking for Fall of Giants by Follett on www.booklending.com and accidentally clicked on this one and requested to borrow it. I figured what the hell and read it.

I'm pretty glad I did. Follett is a freaking beast when it comes to his research....of course he could be making all of this up and I'd never know. It just sounds good to me.
He puts his characters through the proverbial wringer. Just when I thought the good guys were finally catching a break, he'd hit them with some new horrible calamity.
I was exhausted by the end of it and needed to read some horrible vampire fiction to "cleanse my palate".
But this book is one of those that you can totally lose yourself in. Just dive right in, the water is nice!

Run At Destruction by Lynda Drews

I borrowed this book via Kindle Lending from a friend who actually worked with the man accused of killing his wife.
No one he worked with knew about his past until this book came out.
Sheer curiosity made me read this book but I have to say the author did a pretty good job for a novice writer.

From Amazon: Runner and longtime Green Bay, Wis. resident Drews revisits the mid-1980s death of her close friend and fellow runner, popular high school teacher Pam Bulik. She chronicles the small community's response to Pam's death, suspicions of suicide that rang false, and the subsequent naming of Pam's husband, Bob Bulik, as the primary suspect. Events, including Bob's alleged affair, drag readers through the gruesome and tawdry details, some difficult to read (especially in descriptions of the victim).

I hate to nitpick (no, I don't) but the author uses character names way too much in dialogue. This is just uncomfortable and unnatural. Even though this is supposed to be a true story, normal people just don't speak that way. Like "DeAnna, I don't know why you never blog anymore"
"Well, Joe Schmo, I just lost my blogging mojo. You understand, don't you, Joe Schmo?"
"DeAnna, you should blog more often. Especially, DeAnna, because you read all the time."
You get the picture, I'm sure.
I do like the way the author kept us guessing. I honestly didn't know if the husband was going to get away with it or not. At times it seemed like he didn't have a legal leg to stand on and at others it seemed like everyone was totally buying his ridiculous story.

I was disappointed with the author, Lynda Drews, because back in 1984, she was completely certain of Bob Bulik's guilt but now, in the present day, she seems to back off her opinion a little.
She seemed to be buying his ridiculous story 25 years later.

It was obvious she researched the hell out of this story and then also wrote from the heart.

I'm not a big true crime fan but I found this one fascinating.