When you see a good-condition classic at Goodwill, you grab it!

Registered for the Race to 3 Million Challenge.

Taking this one with me on a trip to Oberhausen, Germany (with a few stops in between). Who knows where I'll leave it, but I wanted to at least make this note before it gets in the suitcase :)

And a bonus because I'm nuts -- here's my "travel plan for books".

I didn't finish it in Germany, but did read most of it on the planes on the way home. I finished it tonight while Unk was watching a scary movie (I'm not old enough for them). It's seriously a weird book! Why was this such a "classic" that all high school English classes (except mine, of course) had to read it? It's so bizarre!

Of course, all I could think of the whole time I was reading this was Friends Episode #106, where Phoebe and Rachel go to a night class discussing Wuthering Heights. It's pretty entertaining, even though I couldn't find online any copies of all the lines at the class.

Anyway, I got to be 41 years old without ever reading this, and decided it was time. Also, in case I had left an English book in Germany, I thought a recognizable title might be a good idea. Unfortunately, this oddity came back home with me :) (that's not bad; I was just hoping to lighten my suitcase by another book and leave it there)

First, I find the device of Nelly Dean basically telling the entire story to an uninvolved party very odd. Was it really that hard for Emily to convey everything, without relaying the entire story from Miss Dean to Mr. Lockwood, about whom I cared nothing? (and seriously, is he not the archetype of the Mr. Collins character in Pride and Prejudice? And no, I don't care about this one enough to go back and look which was written first.)

Not having an English class to discuss this with, I'll just note the things I'd assume would come up in discussion (or perhaps I'm way off base and they'd never come up in Mr. Faulkner's Advanced Placement English class, of which I was a member in my junior year):

• First, because I have to get it off my chest: Linton has to be the son of Catherine and Edgar, no? There's no way he's actually Heathcliff's. No way.
  
• Of all the "old" English in this book, "staid" for "stayed" hit me the most. Perhaps because of it being a current word?
  
• The business with the graves? Weird, odd, and confusing. And seemingly pointless, really.
  
• Both Catherines being equally spoiled and charming? Hard to believe, and I didn't much like either of them.
  
• Can I mention again my dislike for Mr. Lockwood?
  
• Just like in Cold Comfort Farm, I disliked the use of the "colloquial" spelling (Hareton's dialogue). I fully understand that he spoke differently, and that those with an education would have entirely different diction and vocabulary than those without. However, the writing of the the laborer-speak is distracting and difficult to process. It totally interrupted the flow of the book and took me out of the story.
  
• Interestingly, I was all set to like Heathcliff when the book started. I had such sympathy for him. In the end, I think the only person I really liked was Nelly Dean! Maybe Hareton a little bit, but really, hardly any of the characters were sympathetic.
  
• I think I'd have been disturbed by this in high school, honestly.

This book is ready for releasing. Hopefully it'll find a reader who has been wanting to read it as I did!

Edited to add this link to a forum discussion I started on the book. Sometimes when you finish a book, you need to talk about it, no?