Why Bronte Matters... just one good reason

Remember our Appalachian fiction series and my telling you how intense and long was my struggle to select the five titles from a canon of great stories?

Lee Smith was one of the authors who did not make it on our reading/discussion list, although I did initially have one of her books listed for the program.

Fast forward to the present (I must still be in the Fford time machine, the way I am moving to and fro) and our reading of Jane Eyre and Villette. According to this paper by H.H. Campbell, Smith was signficantly influenced by the sisters Bronte.

I highly recommend Lee Smith's fiction. With which one should you start? This is a difficult question for me to answer because I enjoyed all her work. Forced to decide, I would encourage you to begin Oral History. This was one of the titles involved in my decision to use multiple narrators in Reclamation, a manuscript to which I must return for yet another edit.

Villette Discussion Thursday, August 23

Yes, it's a bit sombre, but do you agree Villette was worth reading, especially with relation to the development of Charlotte Bronte as a novelist? It will be interesting to discuss this story and to compare and contrast it with Jane Eyre.

For those of you who read from page the first to the final words, the ending was something else, eh? I will be interested in hearing your views about whether M. Paul made it back.

No doubt, we will have an interesting few hours of dialogue on August 23rd. I'll see you at the library.

More on the Merits of Harry

By far, this is one of the best articles in the blogosphere, or anywhere else for that matter, that I have read about the merits -- literary and otherwise -- of the Harry Potter series.