Jane Eyre Movie

I've been pretty excited about the Jane Eyre movie coming out. I've been looking forward to it for months and I've done several things to get prepared. First, one of my book clubs chose it as the March book, so I reread it a couple of weeks ago. Second, Goodreads has been promoting the movie as well by holding a contest where you read the book, take a quiz and register to win free movie tickets. Well, guess what? I won two tickets to the premiere which was last night, and took a friend with me.

As I reread the novel, I enjoyed it so much more than when I read it for school (both in high school and graduate school I think) - very much like my reread of Age of Innocence, The Great Gatsby and other classics I've reread in the past couple of years. I had a hard time putting it down, which worked out well since the second half of the book was read while I was on vacation and I had some extra time to devote to reading.


Finally, I went to see the movie last night and was very satisfied with the way it was done. I like the creative license taken with the arrangement of the movie - the movie opens near the middle of the book. And, a long book was condensed into a two-hour movie. Though some things, like Jane's relationship with the Rivers family, was glazed over, nothing was left out so much that I felt the book wasn't being done justice. And, even with being shortened everything still made sense. The ending was done a bit differently from the book but worked I'd say. And even though I've just reread the book, it took seeing the movie to remind me what a creepy story it is (old creaky house, storms, crazy lady in the attic, etc.). 

I'll be seeing it again with my book club Monday night, followed by a discussion of book versus movie. Good thing I liked it as much as I did!

James and Wharton

Recently I've enjoyed rereading Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and Daisy Miller by Henry James. Just over a year ago, I visited Asheville, NC, and the Biltmore House with my family, and I was fascinated to read in Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guidebook that both Wharton and James were friends of the Vanderbilts and visited them at their mountain home. The Biltmore House is so over the top with rooms much bigger than my entire house, rich furnishings and a view to die for. It made me imagine what it was really like to get invited to visit them in the lap of luxury. Considering this, it was interesting to imagine Wharton and James writing their novels about those in a similar lifestyle to the Vanderbilts, and living this kind of lifestyle themselves. After reading these two books, I watched both the movies of Age of Innocence and Daisy Miller, as well as The House of Mirth, a movie based on another Wharton novel. Click here to review my post on the Biltmore House.

Celebrating Women's History Month

Last month, I listed suggested reading to celebrate African American History Month. I'm a little behind in getting this posted, but in celebration of March being Women's History Month, here is some recommended reading that celebrates the female experience:

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
Anne Bradstreet poetry
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
A Lost Lady, O Pioneers!, and My Antonia, all by Willa Cather
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Road to Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (You didn't really think I'd leave this one out, did you?)
The Last Girls by Lee Smith
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Stone Diaries by Joyce Carol Oates
Anne Sexton poetry
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Book Club Selections for 2010

Last summer I posted what my friends in my book club and I would be reading over the summer. For 2010, we've already chosen our selections because our list is especially ambitious. I'm already on the waiting list at the library for most of these, or I already own them, so I'll be getting started very soon.

Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes by Deborah Smith, et al
Knit the Season by Kate Jacobs
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
A Different Drummer: My Thirty Years with Ronald Reagan by Michael K. Deaver
The Harry Potter series (yes, the whole series!)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout
Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCaig
How the World Makes Love…And What it Taught a Jilted Groom by Franz Wisner
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsen

Have you read any of these already? What did you think?

Asheville

I used Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains: A Guide last week while in Asheville with my family. The book is divided into tours that work geographically. I was able to do parts of tours 8 and 9 (Weaverville and North Asheville, and Downtown and South Asheville, respectively), though a bit out of order.

The night we arrived we visited the Biltmore House for the Candlelight Tour and saw the house in all its Christmas finery. I had read ahead in my Guide to know that:

• George Vanderbilt’s library housed 24,000 volumes.
• Henry James and Edith Wharton (childhood friend of Edith Vanderbilt) had visited the house in 1905. Wharton had just published The House of Mirth. Each author is the namesake of a suite of rooms at Biltmore.

We found a monument to O. Henry’s story, “Gift of the Magi” set in bronze in a sidewalk on a street in downtown Asheville, and later we visited the Riverside Cemetery and saw O. Henry’s gravesite.


Also at Riverside Cemetery is the grave of Thomas Wolfe, and the gates of the cemetery also honor him.

My dad and I drove by the Richmond Hill Inn one morning while we were out to see the site where Georgia-born Poet Sidney Lanier camped one winter before he died in 1881. The Inn was later built on the site and the Sidney Lanier Garden was planted behind the Inn. Well, supposedly. When we arrived, the Inn was closed, but a gate was open just wide enough for us to get in to look around. I poked all around but couldn’t find the Garden. Instead, we did find this (see picture below). An arsonist set fire to one of the buildings of the Richmond Hill Inn early in 2009 and authorities have yet to solve the case. It caused $7 million in damages. You can read more about it in the Asheville Citizen-Times here.

Near the Inn is the last building that remains of Highland Hospital. Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, was hospitalized here in the summer of 1936 and several other times before her death. She suffered from schizophrenia. In 1948, hospital’s main building, which housed Zelda and other patients, caught fire and Zelda died of smoke inhalation. Today what remains of the hospital is Homewood, a home on the property for the hospital’s main physician, Robert Carroll. It’s now a special events facility.

In 1936 while Zelda was at Highland Hospital, Scott lived at The Grove Park Inn. He had tried to rent a space at Julia Wolfe’s boarding house, The Old Kentucky Home, but was turned away because Julia didn’t rent to alcoholics. The Grove Park still celebrates Scott’s birthday each year on September 24, though he was reportedly a difficult guest due to heavy drinking, an extramarital affair and a suicide threat during his stay.

A number of other writers have stayed at the Grove Park including Charles Frazier, Margaret Mitchell, Alex Haley and Pat Conroy.