Book One: Wuthering Heights

Due to a very tiny little snowstorm, and my location in Southern Indiana, I have had some extra time on my hands the past two days.  We had an early dismissal yesterday, and a two hour delay today.  Those extra hours gave me the time I needed to finish up Wuthering Heights.  In an effort to keep it real, I should explain that I was already halfway through the book.  And that I really did nothing else yesterday.  I came home from school (two hours earlier than normal) and graded papers for one hour.  Then I slept for two hours.  Then I basically read off and on for the rest of the night.  I picked up the house a little, and I spent some time with my husband, but that's about it.  He was feeling sick, so I skipped making dinner because he didn't want to eat.  I just ate a half-dozen cookies and some leftover soup from the weekend.

But back to the book.  I so love this book.  And it makes me so sad.  It's dark and dreary.  It would be perfect January reading.  It's a love story, but unlike so many other love stories.  Heathcliff and Cathy are "soul mates" but they are never together in their earthly lives.  He is dark and cruel and hateful.  She is beautiful and selfish and foolish.  The book follows their lives from childhood through death.  Heathcliff is a Byronic hero.  Someone who is deeply flawed and/or deeply troubled.  Someone disinterested in societal norms.  The bad boy most teenage girls want to fall in love with simply because he's dangerous and mysterious (I think that's why my female students are so in love with the fictional Edward Cullen).  It took me close to two weeks to get through Wuthering Heights.  Parts of it are just so dreary, so sad.