I haven’t been posting about all of my reading endeavors lately, because I felt like I ran out of ways to say, “I liked it”, or “It was too long”, but Jane Eyre consumed enough hours of my life to warrant a blog post. I started this book two months ago, put it down for a week for a quick fling with David Sedaris, then (grudgingly) picked it back up again, determined to finish what I started. Man, I wanted to love a classic like this, but this book really felt like a struggle. The lengthy descriptions of the English landscape were too wordy, and the conversation felt incredibly stiff and overly formal. I was frustrated by the fact that I had a such hard time placing myself in the middle of the story. Then I realized that this book was published 163 years ago, and I was suddenly amazed at how much the English language has remained relatively unchanged over the past century-and-a-half. Granted, Jane never used the word ‘dude’ or referred to Mr. Rochester as ‘smokin’ hot’, but the fact that I was able to understand 99.9% of this book’s contents seems surprising. And I will admit, the last quarter of the book did really capture my attention, as I read on to see which fate Jane would choose. So I’m glad I finished it; I’m glad my ‘literary horizons’ have been broadened. Plus, it looks darn pretty sitting on my bookshelf…
