Stuff I've read

The book for March was Wuthering Heights. It's one of those classic novels that it seems like everyone had to read in high school, but for the life of me, I don't remember ever having this particular classic assigned. I don't remember my peers ever mentioning it, and to my honest, my first exposure to this book was when, at 16, I read Twilight (I know, I know...shameful. But I was sixteen and wanted something useless to sandwich between things like The Bell Jar and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but I digress.).

Anyways, the protagonist of the Twilight series is a high school girl whose favorite book happens to be Wuthering Heights. When I found a beautiful hard-backed copy for $10 here in Oz, I had to have it. And in purchasing, I had to read it.

This one was a struggle for me. I've come to the decision that I never want to own a book I've not read, so I was determined to make it through, but Wuthering Heights and I did not get along. Don't get me wrong. The prose is fluid and beautiful, in a striking way, and it makes me wish that we still spoke and wrote so clearly. I'm not one to be concise, as a rule, and I loved the rich language and wordy descriptions that make up this book. It's like taking a slightly-too-big bite of pizza and getting a delicious mouthful of melted cheese; you don't always do it on purpose, but it usually ends up being just right.

In spite of the beauty of Emily Bronte's writing, I struggled to enjoy her story. It felt unnecessarily dramatic, with characters that were largely hard to love. There seemed to be little to no redemption or resolution, and by the end of it, I felt like I'd watched a really bad soap opera. Part of me felt guilty for not loving a book with such a long-standing history in literature, but if I'm being honest, I shouldn't have to. Emily Bronte's writing is timeless and close to perfect, surely. But her story? It's one that will sit on my bookshelf, looking pretty.