All the faults of Jane Eyre … magnified a thousand fold
from The North British Review, 1847
A reviewer for a Scottish magazine, The North British Review, used the words above to dismiss Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. He didn’t believe the work would find a broad audience, but as the Narrator says, “Little did he know.”
The Examiner called it “strange.”
We detest the affectation and effeminate frippery which is but too frequent in the modern novel, and willingly trust ourselves with an author who goes at once fearlessly into the moors and desolate places, for his heroes; but we must at the same time stipulate with him that he shall not drag into light all that he discovers, of coarse and loathsome, in his wanderings …
The Spectator seemed to think it a well-written but ugly story. “The success is not equal to the abilities of the writer; chiefly because the incidents are too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive, the very best being improbable, with a moral taint about them …”
And yet Brontë’s book endures. (I found these reviews on a site dedicated to the book.)
Book reviewing takes many forms today. A few weeks ago, an executive at Barnes and Noble noted upswings in sales according to the buzz on TikTok, which they call BookTok. Some authors have linked the success of a book to single BookTok videos.
On YouTube, reviewers call themselves Booktubers. Occasionally I think about recording videos or doing a podcast in order to boost this blog, but I have yet to justify the time. Anyone can jump into the video side of social media, and I think I have a good voice for it. But it takes a certain talent and good lighting to gain attention, not to mention all the visuals and actually having something to say.
Merphy Napier appears to be doing it right. Here she talks about books that live up to their hype, a follow-up to a video about hyped books she didn’t like.
Petrick Leo asked his network to nominate overrated fantasy series, talked over five of them, and shared his own list of five.
Elliot Brooks talks about good adult fantasy series with soft magic systems and hard magic systems.
Disney Nightmares: Speaking of fantasy, Helen Freeh talks about reasons parents should have been wary of Disney long before now.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s excellent essay, “On Fairy Stories,” addresses the very problem that Disney had from its inception: the notion that fairy stories are exclusively children’s stories. They are not. They are stories allowing adults to examine the world from a new perspective to find a better way to live. Tolkien asserts that people connect “the minds of children and fairy- stories,” but “this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than as normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large.”
Elsewhere in shared videos, a view of the side of Glastonbury Tor in Somerset.