"Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights"

In September 2008 I started a book group. The group started small and it's still quite small, although it has grown a little bit in the past 18 months. We meet at my home every fourth Tuesday evening of the month to discuss the books we read, as well as to visit with each other and partake in a delicious dessert. (My mom always makes a really yummy dessert for our meetings.)

My book group met last night and we had a great time. We ate chocolate truffle cake and discussed our book, which was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I've been meaning to read this book for a long time, but I'd never been motivated enough to do it, so I was excited when I found out that this was someone's pick. I actually already had Jane Eyre on my iPod, so I'm grateful for book group because it gave me the incentive to finally give Jane Eyre a try.

The book was quite long (about 21 hours), but I was able to get into it right away. I worried that this book might be hard for me to follow since it was written in 1847, but it really wasn't. (I sometimes find books written that long ago hard to follow since our vernacular has changed and evolved so much since then. ) Long story short, I loved the book! I enjoyed it so much more than I was expecting to.

Since I liked Jane Eyre so much I decided to try to read Wuthering Heights since it was written by Charlotte Brontë's sister, Emily. I had a completely different experience with this book! I also listened to this book on my iPod, and after listening to the first three hours of the book I had absolutely no idea what was happening! I was contemplating ditching the book because I felt like I was wasting my time. I mean, there are so many good books to read and so little time, so I don't want to waste any of my precious time by listening to a book that I'm not understanding in the least!

I decided to look up Wuthering Heights on Spark Notes and I spent a long time reading a synopsis of the book, an analysis of the different characters and also an explanation of the chronology of the book since the majority of it is told through a series of flashbacks. After reading all of this information about Wuthering Heights, I decided to give it another go. I'm so glad I did! On one hand I absolutely hated the book because the characters were so miserable, evil, spiteful, vengeful, despicable etc., but on the other hand I ended up really enjoying the book because I felt like such an expert on it after doing so much reading about it on the internet! Just for the record, I really had missed so much of the plot, so I'm glad that I read a synopsis of the book so that I could mildly educate myself as to what was taking place.

Anyway, I feel proud of myself for having stuck out this book even though it was dreadful at first! Plus, now I can add two more classics to my "books read" list! I love book group!