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Aaaayyyy!

And good job removing that blemish Isabella!

Ah, but we all love your personality! (If only you'd read Villette ....)

I think my personality needs adjusting sometimes.

my personality is ok by me and myself and I

Thanks. I read Villette in early 2015 (I think) and can't really remember much of it. Would rereading it improve my personality?

No, because your personality is fine ... but it's fun to banter about books with you on a light-hearted level.

I'd like to reread some Brontë, having learned how much the sisters mean to you (and another member here I deeply respect, who hasn't been around for a while - kdm1984), but I guess I'll start with Wuthering Heights itself. I was in the second hand bookstore yesterday; next time I'm in there, I'll pick up a few Brontës.

KDM 1984 still posts sometimes.

I haven't seen anything from her for at least a month. Her theology thread was one of the best threads on this site.

Squeal! If you do purchase WH please ensure it's an edition in two volumes (albeit in one book). The second volume should begin after Chapter XIV. Single-volume editions are highly bastardised by Charlotte after Emily's death, and they contain a patronising forward by Charlotte as well.

I love the novel for its concentric narrative structure and of course for Isabella Linton's plight. I do not consider WH a love story, but rather it is a tale of racism and revenge.

Enjoy!

You may also enjoy The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne), which has the same theme of domestic abuse. I don't like its narrative structure but the story is quite revolutionary for its time. It's hailed as the first work of feminist fiction in the UK.

Thanks for your suggestions; I'll certainly take them onboard. My reading list is loaded with Dickens and Dostoyevsky for this month (two rather different, though not entirely different authors, I know), but I'll try to make sure February is a Brontë month. I know October is your Brontë month (well, I suppose your whole year consists of Brontë months, but I read that you had a particular tradition of reading Wuthering Heights in October), but at this stage, I'm too excited to wait that long.

I've not read any Anne at all, and I can't remember ever seeing her in any of my favourite bookstores - though I probably wouldn't have noticed anyway.

I'll let you - and anybody else who cares - know what I think once I've reread WT. I have to admit that my first reading (2013, I'd say - I was SEVENTEEN) was a largely cursory and unsatisfactory reading. I had a habit of reading classics in this fashion back then, wanting to dispatch them as quickly as possible so that I could claim the intellectual "bragging rights" of having read them, but with a minimum of pain. I now see that this attitude was thoroughly wrong and am having to reread many of the titles from that time. I just hope I can get away with not having to reread Moby Dick, which genuinely was TORTURE.

Off topic, but have you read Crime and Punishment, and if so, what did you think of it? I enjoyed it very much.

I have read it, and consider it one of his weaker novels - as he did himself - although I love everything he wrote. Being hyper-empathetic, I have a hard time hearing about graphic acts of violence; this is a problem I have with all of his major four novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov and House of the Dead, insofar as they all contain unnecessarily explicit descriptions of violent acts.

I love the theme of Christian redemption at the end of the novel, and the idea that even as depraved a character as Raskolnikov can be redeemed by the Christian power of love. I do think this theme was summed up better and more maturely in Brothers Karamazov and even House of the Dead, however. Dostoyevsky considered The Idiot his best novel, and Prince Myshkin his surrogate son. I think if he had lived a little longer, however, he'd have concluded - rightly - that Brothers Karamazov was his best work. Alyosha, the hero, was actually named after his biological son, who died in infancy (I can't remember whether before or after The Idiot).

Dostoyevsky's view that our humanity is all that matters, is all that is capable of redeeming the endless suffering of our "being-in-the-world-as-such", as existentialists would call it, is I think the Alpha and Omega of his philosophy, and there are passages in Crime and Punishment which convey this very movingly. Just don't, whatever you do, view it as a detective story or a voyeuristic "slasher" type story. It is, apart from its quintessentially Russian morbid obsession with pain and violence, a fundamentally and humbly Christian work, though I don't mean this in too doctrinaire a sense. It's Christian in the sense that it's such a powerful eulogy on the Christian virtues and their power to transform the life of the lost, lonely individual; not to rid him of his suffering, but to allow him to achieve a kind of nobility through it; a kind of joy and despair at the same time. The central theme of Crime and Punishment is best summed up in these words from Brothers Karamazov, written by Dmitri to his brother Alyosha, after the former is convicted (presumably falsely) of patricide and sent to Siberia:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155733311357121&set=a.262865292120&type=3

This is my first attempt at posting a photo. The real me is in this photo, although in shadow form only. I have been taking shadow pictures of me for years, before selfies and I didn't have a timer on the camera.

very interesting what is it about shadow pictures that you like?