Friday, March 7, 2014

Five approachable must-read classics

At the Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Amelia Schonbek came up with five approachable must-read classics, including:
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights is one of the wildest novels in the English canon. It was written in Victorian England, but its characters constantly push the boundaries of what was then considered proper behavior (some of them are even brash by today’s standards!). Brontë played with gendered power dynamics and social acceptability throughout the book, which is an often raw, at times violent, and entirely obsessive love story.
Read about the other books on the list.

Wuthering Heights appears on Molly Schoemann-McCann's top five list of the lamest girlfriends in fiction, Becky Ferreira's list of seven of the worst wingmen in literature, Na'ima B. Robert's top ten list of Romeo and Juliet stories, Jimmy So's list of fifteen notable film adaptations of literary classics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best thunderstorms in literature, ten of the worst nightmares in literature and ten of the best foundlings in literature, Valerie Martin's list of novels about doomed marriages, Susan Cheever's list of the five best books about obsession, and Melissa Katsoulis' top 25 list of book to film adaptations. It is one of John Inverdale's six best books and Sheila Hancock's six best books.

The Page 99 Test: Wuthering Heights.

--Marshal Zeringue