FIRST LINES FRIDAY: Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte

Hello, Friday! First Lines Friday is a feature on my blog in which I post the first lines from a book I am interested in reading, either a new release or a backlist title! For the next several Fridays, I will be featuring titles I am going to hopefully read as part of my 12 Decades/12 Months/12 Books challenge (#12decades12books). I have been slowly making my way through reading all of the works by the Bronte sisters, and Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley is the one I’ve chosen for this year. It’s something I would also like to read in conjunction with Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South, due to the similar subject matter of northern England’s mills in the early 19th century.

Of late years, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we are going back to the beginning of this century: late years — present years are dusty, sun-burnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the mid-day in slumber, and dream of dawn.

If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you were never more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps toward the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic — ay, even an Anglo-Catholic — might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.

Which is your favorite book by the Bronte sisters?

FIRST LINES FRIDAY: The Jungle Books, by Rudyard Kipling

Hello, Friday! First Lines Friday is a feature on my blog in which I post the first lines from a book I am interested in reading, either a new release or a backlist title! For the next several Fridays, I will be featuring titles I am going to hopefully read as part of my 12 Decades/12 Months/12 Books challenge (#12decades12books). I read The Jungle Books in 2013 for my master’s thesis to compare parts of it and its significance to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, but I want to revisit it as a more mature and aware reader!

It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. ‘Augrh!’ said Father Wolf, ‘it is time to hunt again’; and he was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: ‘Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and strong teeth go with the noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in this world.’

It was the jackal — Tabaqui, the Dish-licker — and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of anyone, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and rides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee — the madness — and run.

What do you think of The Jungle Books and any of its adaptations?

BOOK REVIEW: Branwell, by Douglas A. Martin

BOOK REVIEW: Branwell, by Douglas A. MartinTitle: Branwell: A Novel of the Brontë Brother by Douglas A. Martin, Darcey Steinke
Published by Soft Skull
Published: July 7th 2020
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 256
Format: Trade Paper
Source: Publisher
Goodreads

For readers of Michael Cunningham's The Hours and Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles, this genre-bending exploration of the tragic figure of Branwell Brontë and the dismal, dazzling landscape that inspired his sisters to greatness is now available in a new edition with an introduction by Darcey Steinke.
Branwell Brontë―brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne―has a childhood marked by tragedy and the weight of expectations. After the early deaths of his mother and a beloved older sister, he is kept away from school and tutored at home by his father, a curate, who rests all his ambitions for his children on his only son. Branwell grows up isolated in his family’s parsonage on the moors, learning Latin and Greek, being trained in painting, and collaborating on endless stories and poems with his sisters.
Yet while his sisters go on to write Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Agnes Grey, Branwell wanders from job to job, growing increasingly dependent on alcohol and opium and failing to become a great poet or artist.
With rich, suggestive sentences “perfectly fitted to this famously imaginative, headstrong family” (Publishers Weekly), Branwell is a portrait of childhood dreams, thwarted desire, the confinements of gender―and an homage to the landscape and milieu that inspired some of the most revolutionary works of English literature.

Douglas A. Martin’s Branwell is a queer interpretation of Branwell Bronte’s life, and an interpretation that I found both thought-provoking and stylistic. Martin imagines a Branwell struggling to live up to the expectations he felt as the ‘man of the house’ and ultimately failing on several levels. I think to get the full scope of the novel, the reader must be familiar with the Bronte history and lore, especially knowing that Charlotte destroyed so much of their family’s personal writings and letters after their deaths. It raises the question of what Charlotte was hiding or protecting, and Martin’s novel explores an answer to the question of Branwell. Based on my own research, this novel takes liberties with the life of Branwell, though I feel these liberties were tied in with Martin’s own experiences through revelations in the introduction to this book. I ultimately found the sexual content of this novel disturbing, and the barn scene at the end soured my reading experience because the implied bestiality ended up being all I could think about as it seemed out of place in the context and scope of things.

I do find it interesting to me to have received this almost alongside another title about Branwell’s life and I am looking forward to reading that one as well, and Martin’s seems to be in stark contrast thematically and stylistically to the other book about the affair of “unspeakable acts” Branwell had in his lifetime, as the affair has been referred to as a screen for homosexual activity. If you are interested in queer interpretations of literary figures and stylistic writing, based in fact or toying with it, this may pique your interest, but do be aware of the heavy subject matter.

Many thanks to Soft Skull Press for sending me a complimentary copy to review! All opinions are my own.

FIRST LINES FRIDAY: The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories, by Jack London

Hello, Friday! First Lines Friday is a feature on my blog in which I post the first lines from a book I am interested in reading, either a new release or a backlist title! For the next several Fridays, I will be featuring titles I am going to hopefully read as part of my 12 Decades/12 Months/12 Books challenge (#12decades12books). I think I read The Call of the Wild forever ago before I really started recording my books in an accurate and timely manner, but I have certainly read and taught several of Jack London’s short stories when I was an adjunct professor. When I saw this edition of The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories, I knew I had to get it so I could revisit Jack London’s writing. This selection is from The Call of the Wild.

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants’ cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller’s boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled.

Which Jack London story is your favorite?

FIRST LINES FRIDAY: Emma, by Jane Austen

Hello, Friday! First Lines Friday is a feature on my blog in which I post the first lines from a book I am interested in reading, either a new release or a backlist title! For the next several Fridays, I will be featuring titles I am going to hopefully read as part of my 12 Decades/12 Months/12 Books challenge (#12decades12books). I last read Emma during my master’s program in England in 2013 (where has the time gone???), but with the release of the film this year, I want to revisit it and see how my opinions and views have changed since I read it last.

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father, and had, in consequence of her sister’s marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses, and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.

Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr Woodhouse’s family, less as a governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of Emma. Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor’s judgment, but directed chiefly by her own.

Have you seen Emma.? What is your favorite Jane Austen adaptation?