Jane Eyre

Book Review: Jane Eyre

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
Read by Nadia May

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Classic gothic romance

I haven’t been quiet about the fact that I haven’t read many classics in my life and that now that I’m starting to read more of them, I don’t connect with many of them all that much. I’ve watched an adaptation of this book, so I already knew the story (I’d forgotten some of it, but not the main “reveal”). The only reason I finally decided to read the book, though, is because I came across the audiobook narrated by Nadia May, whom I have greatly enjoyed as narrator for other classics. I still liked her narration, but the story itself was not my favorite.

I really appreciated many of the aspects of Jane’s characters. Despite being mistreated through much of her childhood, she’s an independent young woman with a strong moral compass. She holds her own against some forceful personalities (mostly men) who try to bend her to their wills. I can’t fully place myself into Jane’s shoes, partly because I’m far removed from that time period and culture and partly because her upbringing was vastly different from mine, but I would definitely have made some different choices than her. I’ve seen this book hailed as a feminist work, but to me at least, that mostly just comes across in how terrible both of the main men in the book are. Mr. Rochester, with whom Jane has a romance that so many swoon over, is deceptive, manipulative, overbearing, and willing to trick Jane into an immoral (and illegal) situation. St. John is whiny, cold, overbearing, and abusive—seriously, when he tells her that if she turns him down, she’ll be saying no to God, I immediately lost any tiny bit of respect I may have had for him. Yet, Jane consistently sees both of these men as good, noble, righteous, defending St. John by saying how pious he is or whatever…so the strength of character Brontë gave Jane sort of dissolves in the presences of these strong men.

Add to all of that the long descriptions, which are generally lost on me, more detail to Jane’s adolescence than I really feel was necessary, and some underwhelming plot choices, and this book was never destined to rise above “okay” for me. I didn’t hate it, but I really didn’t like it much. I have a feeling that a lot of what one gets out of this book is going to depend on what they bring to the book. I didn’t quite bring the right stuff to it, but others clearly do and if you’re interested in the book, maybe you will too.

Find out more about Jane Eyre

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If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Notebook Collection, part 5

/ Kristi / 2 Comments

I don’t know why I got it into my head that I needed to share every notebook I bought on my blog. It’s probably part of being obessed with buying them. I want to share them, and the story behind them, with others!

If anyone is interested in the previous posts as my collection grew: the first 12 notebooks, the next 10, 6 more, and another 5. And now here are the next 5 additions:

6

Box Lunch is my favorite of all the “geek stores” at our local mall, mostly because it is so focused on things from my childhood (A Goofy Movie, Aristocats, The Rescuers), on top of the more recent Disney movies, and many other popular fandoms. I found this notebook in the clearance section. The cover of this half-size notebook has lenticular printing, which sort of makes it look like Mario’s trying to dodge barrels if you tilt the book up and down.

7

This is from the same visit to Box Lunch. You may recognize the look if you’ve seen the movie Up. It’s about the same size as a full-size notebook, though the length and width are swapped (not even my first notebook with that shape). The front and back cover are actually tied on with that string you see there, which worried me at first, imagining the pages falling out. But the pages are bound together, so I think it’s safe.

8a

At a bargain store, I found an incredibly interesting notebook that was labeled a “novel journal” (not the one shown here). It was based on the book Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I’ve seen an adaptation, but not read the book, so I looked around the area where I found it for an edition I could connect with more, since the label mentioned some other novels that I would have preferred. I didn’t find any, but I still loved the notebook, so I bought it.

8bA few weeks later at Half Price books, I found a few more varieties of novel journals, so with a little deliberation, I bought the Sherlock Holmes edition. Shown in the right picture, the lines are actually comprised of text from the stories, which is what makes these journals so cool!

(Side note: I gave the Jane Eyre version to my sister, who actually has read the book.)

9aWhile considering the previous notebook at Half Price Books, I saw this book nearby. I mentioned in the previous notebook post that I seem to like notebooks with maps on them, and this was no exception.  9b Besides the Tolkien quote on the front, it’s filled with other quotes about adventure, presumably because it’s meant to be a travel journal.

Finally for this batch, this cute half-sized, skinny notebook was a gift from my in-laws for Christmas. I don’t know if it was intentional, but the words on the front were quite appropriate, because my husband and I love escape rooms (and I used to work at one, and while I worked there, we had this expression put on a t-shirt). My mother-in-law went a step further, too, and wrote on the first few pages–a dedication, then some quotes about writing, and to the third page she taped the print-out shown in the right picture above.

I’m now caught up on sharing my notebooks, and I’ve been trying really hard not to get any more. But the only real way to avoid it is to stop going to the notebook section in stores that I visit…and I like to look at them. If I used them more quickly, I might not mind it so much, but it’s so much easier to type than to write in a notebook, as much as I love writing by hand. Anyway…

Do you collect anything related to reading or writing? Feel free to share!