Worth A Try

I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately.  Life has taken me in a different direction these days and I haven't been sitting down at my computer nearly as much.  But that is a story for a different day.

Meanwhile:

Once upon a time, I was a 14 year old girl.  (I know, shocking, right?!)  I was a Freshman in high school, and I had the undying heart of a True Romantic.  I was obsessed with the Victorian age and would spend hours and hours watching classic movies on cable.  As often done in high school English classes, we read Romeo and Juliet, which just further fueled my addiction to classic love stories.

So when our English teacher announced that we were to write a book report on a book of our choice, I of course decided to read a classic love story.

I chose Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

Pictures of book covers in this post both from Amazon.  A great place to pick up a good book for a bargain price!  ...wow.  That sounded like an advertisement.  Maybe Amazon should pay me.

Piece of cake, right?  A True Romantic like I was could never find anything but a complete love for such a classic story!

How wrong I was!!

By the time I had muddled midway through the book, the deadline for our reports was MUCH too close.  There was no way I could possibly get through it all in time!  Not only was the reading a huge challenge, but I'd actually come to hate Cathy and Heathcliff with the passion of 1000 burning suns!  I was disgusted with all the characters and just wanted the stupid book over with already!!

So, I decided to watch the movie again.

1939 Laurence Olivier version.  Classic.

I read the last chapter of the book.

Then I wrote the report.

To my surprise, I got an A on it!

But I did decide that I was done with Emily Bronte and had no interest in her sister's writing either.

A few years ago, I was in my favorite used bookstore and came across a cheap copy of the book.  I decided maybe I should give it another chance sometime, so I bought it.

I still haven't attempted reading it again, but I'll get to it eventually.

In the process of this last move, we decided to go back to using satellite (quite honestly, so we could get the football package.  GO FALCONS!!)  As is often the case when you sign up for new cable or satellite service, they like to give you lots of extra channels in the hopes that you'll decide you can't live without them and will pay the crazy extra charge for them.  During the last few weeks of our free movie channels, I took advantage of our large DVR space and started recording any and all movies that looked interesting to me - while we still had them.

One of the movies that I recorded was the 2011 version of Jane Eyre.

I figured as much as I love classic movies, I MUST HAVE watched a version of this one at some time or other.

One night, I sat down to watch it.

Apparently I never had seen any versions of it.  But, ohmygoodness!  What a great story!  No wonder I've heard so many different people talk about how much they love it!

That settled it.

I needed to read the book.

The following week, when I was in town to run some errands, I stopped by the library and picked up a copy.  

I finished it early yesterday morning.  I decided to take it to bed with me the night before, figuring if I woke up early, I could lay in bed and read.  I literally cried through the last 2 chapters!  So sweet!  

Okay, so the Bronte sisters aren't all bad.

Maybe it's time to give Wuthering Heights another try.