Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for January 31, 2011

Holly, go read Jane Eyre. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Holly might consider reading Jane Eyre, if only it wasn’t 400+ pages long….

Holly watch the movie. What’s this younger generation coming to they don’t know about movies and Cliff Notes.

That is one smart Granny!

Jane Eyre? Who? Gone to google………..and then Barnes & Noble…maybe…

Is this strip a rerun? Because it needs a joke about a Kindle or iPad version of the book.

@Nabuquduriuzhur : Jane Eyre is one of the (few) classics that’s classic because it’s actually good not just because it’s old… unlike Great Expectations.

It would seem that Holly’s motive has been discovered.

\\//_

Holly, Gramma knows you well. There’s no scamming her.

Smart Gramma! Always ask a question when you’re asked a question…especially where kids are concerned.

It’s true, Jane Eyre is a great novel! I avoided it for a long time (and I read everything). When I finally got around to it, I was sorry I’d waited.

Grandma Evie you know Holly so well.

Grandma is cool, and smart, and kinda cute!

What I hated about English when I was a kid, and continued to hate about it when my kids were growing up, and what I will probably hate again when my grandchildren are old enough to study English in school, is the ability of English teachers (there are 3 in my family, whom I love) to destroy everyone’s enjoyment of books by saying this is Great Literature, you must read it, you must read it at my pace, not yours, and then you must pick it apart instead of getting to simply enjoy it. I read Tess of the D’Urbervilles one summer because it was a great read and was not in the English curriculum.

Can you tell this has hit a nerve? : y

At least it is not Charles Dickens! Some of his works were really for the newspapers of the time. He was paid by the column inch, which explains why some of the stories went into agonizing details so he would get paid more. And on and on and on ….. The more inches of newsprint, the more pounds and schillings in his pocket.

I bought a copy of “The House of Seven Gables” in the gift shop of said house, and FORCED myself to finish it. Some “great literature” is dated and dull. Admit to never trying Dickens, but read Jane Eyre more than once as a teenager.

Is it required reading? -surely there’s something more modern Mrs. Wingit could bestow upon her middle schoolers.

Never read it myself because I saw some parts of the BBC adaptation. Not my kind of story, but, apparently, you can read it online if you’re interested : http://www.literature.org/authors/bronte-charlotte/jane-eyre/

Ive never read it but I would love to read it. Hopefully I come across it! :)

Try “The Eyre Affair” by Jasper Fforde.

My kids have tried this one on me. My response is always - “Gosh, I read it so long ago, I don’t remember the details. Why don’t you read it and refresh my memory…”

Really, can’t they find something like “Hitchhikers Guide…” or “The Hobbit” or “The Chronicle’s of Narnia”

My English class read things like the full unabridged Gulliver’s Travels and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (the doctor, not the monster). Holly really is not that lucky.

I hated having to read “required” books instead of those that interested me at the time. I eventually get around to reading any that are worth while (some more than once at different decades of my life) and I’m just now reading the whole works of Chaucer. Good to have waited until having a good background in Medieval customs and language as well as a smattering of French. If I were to raise another family (God forbid) I would want to home school the kids at least in language and history. I’d leave advanced math to professionals (or my elder children-now in their late 40s-early 50s).

I found a marvelous site with “ultra-condensed” books, http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/classics.shtml

These are hilarious, but you probably won’t get it if you haven’t already read the real thing.