book review: wuthering heights

Do you ever have those literature moments when you are so intent on what you are reading, so engrossed in a story that the words seem to physically rush up at you from the page, but still you can't seem to absorb them fast enough for total satisfaction?

Anyone? Bueller?

Well, I do. Not always, but from time to time I get so excited about a book that it's almost better than Christmas. It often happens when I read Victorian literature: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte...you know, the books that were basically Jersey Shore for 19th century England. Apparently I like smut from all centuries. I am an equal opportunity smut consumer. Most recently, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights got me so wrapped up that I finished it in just a few days (lightening speeds for this slow-poke of a reader.)



What else would Wuthering Heights be about but love? Love that seemingly spans distance, time, and even death. Or, so it seems. Even while the characters are declaring their passionate, enduring love, Bronte seems to be questioning the purity of such attachments. Heathcliff and Catherine (they loooooove each other) claim to have a connection rooted at their very souls, yet, they never seem to be able to understand each other's motives and are constantly causing each other heartache. Their notion of an unshakeable, inherent, cosmic love is truly beautiful until one realizes that it completely fails as a practical concept. Despite their passionate soliloquizing, the characters ultimately have nothing in common other than an irrational attachment to each other. They don't even really seem to like each other all that much. Through the confusion of Heathcliff and Catherine's misplaced passion, Bronte completely rejects the possibility that such an intrinsic love could exist, let alone ultimately redeem fatally flawed characters.

And, yet...

I love the ambiguity that Bronte brings to the story through Heathcliff's tortured love. He is himself a despicable character incapable of redemption except for the fact that his love for Catherine, misplaced though it may be, is so enduring and his longing for her so pitiable that it is impossible not to think of him as some sort of tortured monster. After all, was it Grendel's fault that he was born a carnivore? Or what about the Big Bad Wolf and his cup of sugar? It makes me wonder if the simple human ability to love could itself be a redeeming force.

Happily, Bronte never tells (what would be the fun in that?), so we are left to our own conclusions. Suffice it to say that the story is a complete tragedy that ends in marriage, which I suppose in a Shakespearian sense actually makes it a comedy. Worth a read if you like that sort of smutty thing. :)

book review: in the land of invented languages

I'm determined to write book reviews more often. Now that I am back in school and tutoring students in writing, it certainly couldn't hurt for me to get as much practice as I can with writing. Plus, it's a good excuse to put much more time than I should into pleasure reading. :)

Spending time at work and school around people who share my interests and obsessions has given me so much confidence and really awakened my curiosity, which is probably why, when I happened to see a display of In the Lange of Invented Languages by the linguist Arika Okrent at Half-Priced Books, I just had to indulge. The book centers around Okrent's studies of the history and current life of artificial language invention. If you are the kind of person who would find this subject fascinating, read on! If you are not (weirdo), please read this post about my backpack.



In the few short days weeks that it took me to read this book, I went from barely having heard of Esperanto to putting its study on my list of goals for 2012. If it's possible, I have actually fallen deeper into nerdom now that I am aware of the fact that Middle Earth was "made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse"(from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien). Huge volumes of text and hours of story-telling are a reasonable price to pay, in my eyes, to provide a platform on which to present an invented language. I also sympathize with the grown adults that Okrent describes fretting over their Klingon proficiency exams. That's totally normal, right?

More importantly and (somewhat) more seriously, Okrent asks her audience to simply marvel at the ability of languages to give form to the imperfect jumble of human thought. Though human beings often bemoan their plight of having to take pains to properly communication abstract concepts and emotions, the flexibility of the spoken word really does allow for a huge range of self-expression. Since our thoughts can not be perfect, it stands to reason that language would be the same. It's really no wonder that attempts to clean up the mess and make a universal human communication system have generally been less than successful.

As well as being just plain entertaining, In the Land of Invented Languages was a great encouragement to me to continue to be curious and pursue my linguistic studies. I would recommend this book for anyone with an interest in languages, natural or artificial (though, I will warn you that real comprehension does require a bit of linguistic base knowledge.) Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it and am grateful for the shot in the arm of enthusiasm that I needed to propel me into my studies with renewed vigor.

book review: extremely loud and incredibly close

I recently started contributing to the Plano Public Library System blog, Plano Reads, and my first book review just went up! Go see what I think about Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (spoiler alert, I enjoyed it!)

Because you totally care. Obviously.

p.s. - I really didn't like his first book, Everything Is Illuminated. Like, at all. Definitely do not recommend. I do want to see the movie, though.

p.p.s. - I'm currently re-reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Because I'm a total sap that way.