What I'm reading at present. Jane Eyre is more fantastic than I remembered. Highly Irregular was a Christmas present - it's about many quirks of the English language. The young woman who wrote it is smart as a whip. (now, I wonder what she'd make of that saying?) The reason I've got The Mind of the Middle Ages, well - I read The Year of Our Lord, 1943, and in it, Alan Jacobs mentioned something about the Romanesque period as having a different way of thinking than previously or later - anyway, it caught my curiosity enough that I hope this book may shed some light. It's rather like a textbook but interesting all the same. May it continue that way! I have nothing to say yet about The Apostles and Their Times.
I also pick up A Literary Christmas now and then - it has a pretty cover
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress;
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.
- The Song of the Old Mother, by W. B. Yeats
Jane Eyre is one of the weirdest books ever! Many women think it romantic but I think it very strange. I have read it a few times over the years and enjoyed the experience each time but it is so extraordinary. All the Bronte novels are strange, even Anne's ones and she was the most normal of the three.
ReplyDelete'The Song of the Old Mother' is a favourite of mine. :)
I've not heard of The Song of the Old Mother! Nothing could be stranger than Wuthering Heights, but I'm no Bronte expert. But I love Jane Eyre! She has such a firm character.
Delete