Prolific Living

book review

Charlotte Brontë: “Jane Eyre”

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Reading Jane Eyre marks one of my most bittersweet journeys into a novel and into a character’s life and psyche.

Reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte at the pool

I read Charlotte Brontë‘s masterpiece of accomplishment for an unusual reason. I wanted to find a way to get closer to her sister, Emily Brontë. I devoured Emily’s singular publication of “Wuthering Heights“, a story that is at the same time gripping, disturbing, addictive, tragic and sublimely written. Emily Brontë sadly lived her own version of tragedy by departing the world far too soon at the hands of a cruel disease. The excerpt at the beginning of Wuthering Heights explains the close relationship of the sisters, and implies the lonely life that must have followed for Charlotte Brontë after losing Emily and her other siblings. After learning that Charlotte Brontë particularly disliked one of my favorite authors, Jane Austen [Read more…] about Charlotte Brontë: “Jane Eyre”

Mario Puzo: “The Godfather”

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Ageless movies are boldly ignorant of the passage of time. The past and the future merge in the permanence of a timeless story. Years and decades pass us by, we grow up and grow old, and yet these movies only become more enduring with time. The Godfather story is insurmountable, it is beyond a classic, it is unashamedly ignorant of cultural, geographical or age boundaries – it resonates with all of us and has so ever since it first appeared in print in Mario Puzo‘s epic novel in 1969. [Read more…] about Mario Puzo: “The Godfather”

Michelle Moran: “Nefertiti”

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Reading Nefertiti by Michelle Moran in ArgentinaThe most magnificent films of our time would be hard pressed in creating the visual images Michelle Moran stirs up with her powerful words, from a history that existed over three thousand years ago, a kingdom that ruled in the heart of Egypt in an unstable period, and a queen that was so beautiful and graceful that eternity indeed remembers her, as she had desperately hoped it would. “Nefertiti” is compulsively readable and a treasure of historical fiction to behold. [Read more…] about Michelle Moran: “Nefertiti”