Eyre-y nothing

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 19:00:40 GMT

I reread Jane Eyre and I checked out a copy from the library because my childhood copy is a bit elderly and fragile. It happened to be a Penguin Classics edition with footnotes, some of which were actually enlightening and some of which…well.

At the very end (spoilers if you haven't read Jane Eyre, I guess), Mr. Rochester says "Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat?" This was footnoted "scrag: Usually defined as 'neck', which does not make sense: probably an ornamental pin beneath the cravat". I find this proposed reading so contrary and baffling that I have created the following poll:

View Poll: #16848

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Wednesday reading — Ned and Jane

Thu, 04 Jun 2015 03:48:52 GMT

What I've been reading

I read Re Jane, a retelling of Jane Eyre as a half-Korean, half-American orphan who grows up in Queens and takes a nanny job in Brooklyn. I really liked it, both as a version of Jane Eyre—it's very playful with its references but not slavish in its plot structure—and as a book about a Korean family living in NYC and their relationship with their family in Korea.

( The thing I didn't like so much about the ending though. )

I reread To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I hadn't done in some time. Of all Connie Willis's books, I feel like it is the best, just because it does the best job of incorporating all of her tendancies in service of the perfect book to harness them, which conveniently happens to be made up of things that I love.

What I'm reading now

I just started Nemesis Games, the new Expanse book.

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potentialities

Eyre-y nothing

Wednesday reading — Ned and Jane