Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for February 03, 2011

The end certainly justified THOSE means …

But there’s definately sexual tension in that book and sometimes sexual tension can be more satisfying than sex.

bergamot, maybe so, but not to a curious 13 year old girl whose hormones are kicking in…

Well one thing for certain, she properly not going trust grammy again.

Old age and treachery outdoes youth and ambition again. Way to go, Granny!

Holly was looking for something obvious, like she probably sees on MTV. Ho-hum.

Now Val don’t get mad at grandma, I agree your daughter read the book.

That’s not exactly something I’d complain to my mom about.

That’s not exactly something I’d complain to my mom about.

@ rayannina: Only if the end you mean is Holly never trusting a thing gramma says ever again.

At least Holly can now justly say “I read Jane Eyre and it’s a piece of vapid crap.”

…to Eyre is human…

Even though she’s a girl, I still think Holly would identify with Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye.”

Holly will continue to trust Gramma…this is trival, Gramma is there for the big things in Holly’s life and those are the things that can shake a person’s trust. She knows that Gramma loves her and will keep her safe–that’s important not if Gramma tricked her into reading a book!

If something like this is betrayal and shakes the trust, then the relationship wasn’t a strong or secure one to begin with.

Mom & I found a copy of “Lady Chatterly’s Lover”–PG by today’s standards, even when we read it in the late ’70s!

If Holly actually used the word “vapid” in sentence, I’d count as a victory for Grandma!!

Mom doesn’t look too mad at Gramma. More like bemused. And hey, it worked!

If as usual with this age, she won’t remember the next time what happened the last time. Besides, Gran might be telling the truth the next time.

There’s a bit of sex in Jane Eyre, but it’s in the past tense. When Rochester tells the story of his French mistress (and his OTHER mistresses). Of course, the amount of sex is still insignificant compared to the ink devoted to phrenology…

The way to get kids to read Wuthering Heights these days is to have them imagine Heathcliffe as a vampire. It’s actually not that far-fetched; his mysterious backgound, his almost-superhuman vitality, his hypnotic seductiveness, and how so many people around him seem to simply waste away. I think it’s even stated that he doesn’t seem to age like the others. Vampirism was floating around the literary zeitgeist at the time, even in works that weren’t explicitly supernatural; there’s a reason that era and today’s eyeliner-and-velvet subculture share the term “Gothic.”

Val is just pissed that she didn’t think of it…

Jane Eyre was made into a Broadway musical a few years back. I never got to see it, but I do have the CD of the songs. If you ever get a chance to hear it, well worth it.

Love this. And personally, when I read Jane Eyre at age almost-13, I found it incredibly romantic. :)

I loved it…It made me giggle all day…Bravo Gramma

I am using that trick on my future kids.