Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights 

by Emily Bronte

Rating:♥♥♥♥♥♥

Goodreads:Here

It's always hard reviewing a book you love so deeply, to review a book I hate is quite a joy same with ones I like & ones I slightly love a bit tricky but able, but a book you adore, a book of near perfection almost impossible, but I shall dutifully try.

I believe it was Mark Twain who famously said “Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.” or a least read once praise continually & never plan on reading again....right? Well I would have agreed with you until I picked up a little know demonic romance novel by Emily Brontë & was utterly flawed, with it's utter perfection.

Mr Lockwood, a rich man from the south, has rented Thrushcross Grange in the north of England for peace and recuperation. Soon after arrival, he visits his landlord, Mr Heathcliff, who lives in the remote moorland farmhouse called "Wuthering Heights". He finds the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights to be a strange group: Mr Heathcliff appears a gentleman but his manners and speech suggest otherwise; the mistress of the house is in her late teens, an attractive but reserved, even rude woman; and there is a young man who appears to be one of the family although he dresses and talks like a servant.

Being snowed in, he has to stay the night and is shown to an unused chamber where he finds books and graffiti from a former inhabitant of the farmhouse called "Catherine". When he falls asleep, his dreams are prompted by this person and he has a nightmare where he sees her as a ghost trying to get in through the window. He wakes and is unable to return to sleep so, as soon as the sun rises, he is escorted back to Thrushcross Grange by Heathcliff. There he asks his housekeeper, Ellen Dean, to tell him the story of the family from the Heights.

& this is were we learn the entire history of the inhabits of the heights & thrush cross grange throughout births, deaths, marriages, love, loss, revenge & intense passion we hear from nelly how these peculiar inhabits came to be.

I firstly decide to read wuthering heights on a whim, I would like to say to broaden my enjoyment of classic English literature but it wasn't, it was...well this sounds kinda odd but because of the classic Kate bush song "Wuthering Heights" the song supposedly makes more sense once you've read the book (in which it does) but anyway I downloaded a audio copy & decided to listen to it while doing house work which I did, My neighbors must think me quite mad because I was constantly dropping my jaw, fuming with anger, near tears & smiling like a cheasha cat, all of which while cleaning...surely it can't be that entertaing, well it is, not the cleaning part tho...lol

Some people have mentioned the annoyance of being narrated the story by house servant nelly & also mr lockwood but being I loved it, being audio (& reading my paperback latter) I felt as if I was being told the story by nelly myself so on that level it worked really well.

I found the audio for "free" at Librivox Recording, I'm not much for audio books but this was great you can download other free novels & poems at http://librivox.org

If I was reading an e-book I would have highlighted so much of it there would barley a line un-coloured, Emily's writing is nothing less then beautiful. Wuthering Heights Is Why I Read

I still am baffled how Emily could make me read let alone love such deplorable unjust characters each with their own selfish & insidious nature, Yet she did. Which is such a credit to her writing These characters are so very, very flawed & My hatred & pity for them is endless but I simply hate yet i cant not love them Emily made so I would, that's why years latter We're still talking about WH, still being baffled by it & will continue to, as i continue to adore her work.

After reading wuthering heights I felt numb, emotional less. All my emotions has been striped away until I felt bare & numb. It was quite a complexing feeling, I've truly never felt like that after a book, it's just simply that good.

How could I not include some quotes I'm a quoting addict & by god these are beautiful quotes.

"The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 3 (mr Lockwood)

"Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes..."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 3

"I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!"

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 7 (Heathcliff)

"he had ceased to express his fondness for her in words, and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if conscious there could be no gratification in lavishing such marks of affection on him."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 8 (Nelly)

"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 9 (Catherine earnshaw- linton)

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 9 (Catherine earnshaw- linton)

"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 9 (Catherine earnshaw- linton)

"'I seek no revenge on you,' replied Heathcliff, less vehemently. 'That's not the plan. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them. You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style, and refrain from insult as much as you are able. Having levelled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to marry Isabel, I'd cut my throat!'"

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 11 (Heathcliff)

"It is not in him to be loved like me: how can she love in him what he has not?"

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 14 (Heathcliff)

"That is how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my soul."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 15 (Catherine earnshaw- linton)

"Kiss me again, but don't let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer--but yours! How can I?"

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 15 (Heathcliff)

"'And I pray one prayer--I repeat it till my tongue stiffens--Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts HAVE wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! only DO not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I CANNOT live without my life! I CANNOT live without my soul!'"

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 16 (Heathcliff)

"Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? I sha'n't tell my reasons for making this inquiry; but I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights. (Isabella lintion-Heathcliff)

"He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine..."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 24 (Catherine lintion-Heathcliff-earnshaw.)

"I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing."

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 33 (Heathcliff)

"Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my eyes on it: hardly three feet to sever me!"

- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 34 (Heathcliff)

 

That Awesome picture has been done by An artist named gerre to see more of her work visit http://gerre.deviantart.com/ & other great WH fan Art on http://wutheringheightsfc.deviantart.com/ to http://lacevintagebookbloggeraddict.blogspot.com.au

Review: The Night Circus.

The Night Circus.
by Erin Morgenstern.
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥♥

*Warning May Contain Spoilers*



THE CIRCUS ARRIVES without warning.............
It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.




These sentences are the most memorable start to a book I have ever read. Intriguing & dreamlike which makes way for an equally intriguing & dream like novel.

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”

I simply adored this book beyond words, I've been struggling to create a review which I feel is worthy of such a near perfect book ( & I'm far from perfect) so I decided to just write what I felt while reading, why i think you should read it & stick in a whole lot of quotes because I practically highlighted every paragraph Marco & Celia where together in.




"I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough." "But you built me dreams instead.”

To say I loved the book from the start would be a lie. I was engaged from the start but a little between the middle & the start my attention started to wander (not really wandering i did finish it in less then two days but I did put it down! So to me that counts as wandering) I was expecting the relationship of Celia & Marco to just happen, & to have the circus & the other characters just work around it. which is my own fault (I've read too many paranormal romances lately where the characters just jump each other a few chapters or just paragraphs in!) instead you get to watch as this relationship between to arch rivals pitted against each in a game of pure magic & strength unravel then flourish into a beautiful one in a lifetime romance.

"Do you remember all of your audiences?" Marco asks.
"Not all of them," Celia says. "But I remember the people who look at me the way you do."
"What way might that be?"
"As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me."
" I am not afraid of you," Marco says.”

Not only was I blown away by the chracters & the story but by the circus it self which seems to take on its own chracter & identity. The way it's described is unbelievable & so far from reality, i became overwhelmed but just couldn't get enough!


“The sign outside this tent is accompanied by a small box full of smooth black stones. The text instructs you to take one with you as you enter. Inside, the tent is dark, the ceiling covered with open black umbrellas, the curving handles hanging down like icicles. In the center of the room there is a pool. A pond enclosed within a black stone wall that is surrounded by white gravel. The air carries the salty tinge of the ocean. You walk over to the edge to look inside. The gravel crunches beneath your feet. It is shallow, but it is glowing. A shimmering, shifting light cascades up through the surface of the water. A soft radiance, enough to illuminate the pool and the stones that sit at the bottom. Hundreds of stones, each identical to the one you hold in your hand. The light beneath filters through the spaces between the stones. Reflections ripple around the room, making it appear as though the entire tent is underwater. You sit on the wall, turning your black stone over and over in your fingers. The stillness of the tent becomes a quiet melancholy. Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds. The stone feels heavier in your hand. When you drop it in the pool to join the rest of the stones, you feel lighter. As though you have released something more than a smooth polished piece of rock.”

Why you should you read this?.....well to put it simply you just have to! Yep that's my whole reasoning, you just have to, its one of those timeless & classic love stories you just have to read (at least five times) to really appreciate.


“He goes directly to the ballroom, making his way to the center of the dance floor. He takes Celia’s arm, spinning her away from Herr Thiessen.
Marco pulls her to him in an emerald embrace, so close that no one distinction remains between where his suite ends and her gown begins. To Celia there is suddenly no one else in the room as he holds her in his arms. But before she can vocalize her surprise, his lips close over hers and she is lost in wordless bliss.
Marco kissed her as though they are the only two people in the world. The air swirls in a tempest around them, blowing open the glass doors to the garden with a tangle of billowing curtains. Every eye in the ballroom turns in their direction. And then he released her and walks away. By the time Marco leaves the room, almost everyone has forgotten the incident entirely. It is replaced by a momentary confusion that is blamed on the head or the excessive amounts of champagne. Herr Thiessen cannot recall why Celia has suddenly stopped dancing, or when her gown has shifted to its current deep green. “Is something wrong?” he asks, when he realizes that she is trembling.”




I often make my own little playlist or choose theme songs for my favorite books but this time I'm pretty happy with it & found out I'm not the only one who does it, so if your interested here a couple of the song & the playlist:

Florance + the Machine. Cosmic Love (Acoustic):
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plpp&v=khMEtvnmCfE

Emilie Autumn. Cold:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plpp&v=8IfQ6qX-zhE

Bloc Party. Signs:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plpp&v=liZ6ScudE9E

Iron & Wine. The Trapeze Swinger:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plpp&v=Bywv_yjSgHc

The Night Circus Musical Playlist:
http://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL67EDCB3967646AEE


You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Rêves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus.
You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.