Book Review: Jane Eyre

Classics. Those books that have lasted centuries, only to be left on the bookshelves of well meaning readers, unopened, unexplored. The shelves in my room hold many of these works of art, most of them as yet unread.

However, during the week of the neck injury awhile ago, I needed something to entertain me (other than Netflix - one can only take so much bad television). So I decided to tackle one of the books that I had been putting off for much too long. I figured my inability to move would provide motivation to actually finish the venture this time.

I chose Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and completed about half of it before I was up and moving again. It happens to be quite a thick book though, and it took me a few more weeks of regular life to reach the end.

Miss Bronte's protagonist, Jane, is a plain little girl at the opening of the story. Her life, young as she is, is already marked with suffering. Jane is an orphan, entrusted to the care of a guardian who does not love her. To get rid of the troublesome child, Jane is sent to a charity school where she receives an education and eventually ventures out into the world on her own. Life does not get any easier though, as she begins finding her way in the world, and Jane is left to face many difficult situations which try her courage, morality, and love.

As is often the case with old books ("classics"), I found Jane Eyre to be much more gripping and intriguing than I expected. The story is compelling and well thought out. Jane is a character who takes some getting used to, but is easy to grow to love. She is surrounded by a supporting cast with interesting backgrounds who leave their mark on the girl. Her tale is told by a woman with an excellent vocabulary and skill in crafting sentences.

I appreciated the moral questions raised by Bronte and how they were answered. As someone who loves to read, I'm finding it tragically and increasingly difficult to find books written in the recent past with clean language, themes, and choices. Jane Eyre was a breath of fresh air in that regard. Jane had to make terrible decisions, but she was strong and chose well. Emotion did not dictate the choices in her life - sound judgement and convictions did.

Though quite long, Jane Eyre was worth the read. I kept coming back to find out what would happen to the heroine and how she would respond throughout the weeks it took me to finish the book. Jane has left an impression on me, and, I have to say, I'm sorry the story's over.

-Kira

Write.

The perusal of the teen sections of our local libraries and bookstores has become increasingly depressing. Every third book is a convoluted romance and the ones in between contain vampires, violence, and poor writing.

What happened to all the good books?

I’ve always been an avid reader and realizing the depravity of the books offered to people my age was quite a shock. How am I supposed to find something good, clean, and wholesome to read in the midst of all of this - for lack of a better word - garbage?

Walking through the teen section of my library only renews my longing for something more. Why can’t anyone write something good for teenagers?

Wait a minute.

Why can’t I write something good for teenagers?

Writing is also a passion of mine and recently, I figured out why. I want to provide excellent things for people to read. I want not only excellent stories, but excellent characters, excellent words, and excellent morals.

I know the kind of book I want, so why don’t I write it? There are others like me out there - sick of the sin dripping through all the dust jackets encasing the stories aimed at people our age. I’m not the only one feeling the evil thrown at me all the time.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Kind of a cheesy quote, once you’ve heard it enough times. But it’s also a convicting one. If we want something different, let’s make it.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8

What we read shapes what we think and God tells us exactly what kind of thing we’re supposed to be thinking. It’s not the kind of thing given to us from media (including books) on a regular basis.

So why don’t we start creating our own books to read? Clean books. True books. God-honoring books.

Don’t get me wrong - it’s going to be a long process. I hear it’s a lot of work to get a book published and it won’t happen overnight.

But will you work with me? All of you who desperately want to see their name on the spine of a story, will you join me in changing what’s given to young readers everywhere?

The only way to do that is to write. Pick up your pen, open your laptop, put ink in your quill. Work on your craft. Work bit by bit. Day by day. And maybe, someday, we’ll see our names there, in little letters, below a title we worked so hard to create. And when our brothers and sisters in Christ open the story we brought into the world, they’ll read new things. Encouraging things. Hard things. But good things.

It’s not going to be easy. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? We want good things to read. Let’s go make them.

-Kira

Booked

Hello everybody! I managed to find a spare minute when there was no school that I could really do (though plenty left, I assure you :D) to write an update.

But it's not so much an update as another introduction.

My last post, Introducing Following Orders!, was all about posting the book I'm writing on here. By the way, I'm nearing the end - yay! It was extremely jumbled up and I forgot to mention where you can even read the book, but it is all better now because...

I am taking down the first chapter of Following Orders!

If you were planning on reading it, please don't panic yet!

In addition to this change, I have started another blog exclusively for posting books. You can read any and all books that I post on that blog - Booked. This is not to make things crazier and more insane but to clean things up so that this blog can stay straightforward and simple.

At the publication of this post, there is only one post over on Booked, but it explains basically how I'm thinking things are going to work. I won't rewrite it all here, but you can go read all of that if you're interested. As always, suggestions and ideas are more than welcome.

The web address (correct terminology?) is: chaptersandscenes.blogspot.com. Now I need to go hunt out some more work that I can do. Bye!

-Kira

Introducing Following Orders!

If it's not obvious yet, I love to write. So much so, that I sincerely hope to be an author in the near future. I won't delve into how I define "author" right now because I know some people say you only have to write a book and others say you have to be published and on and on... Just know that I plan to be one.

As part of fine tuning my writing skills, my parents are allowing me to do a writing curriculum this year in which I get to write a novel. That's right - a whole novel. I'm so happy!!!

I wrote my first full novel last November as part of National Novel Writing Month and it's a little sloppy because of the speed and I haven't had time to edit it yet. I'm hoping to do something with it though - potentially post it on here after Following Orders. But we will see how this goes first.

So anyway, because of busy-ness and high school and blah blah blah, I haven't really been posting with any sort of consistency or speed - it's been a month and a half since my last post. By publishing my novel on here, I not only solve the no-posting problem, I also can test it out and see how it goes. I'm warning you right now, so don't say I didn't: if you don't feel like being a guinea pig for a very naive writer who has not really done a whole lot of editing on this round, don't read this novel. Got it? Good.

Now for those of you who are interested in being tested upon and asked relentlessly "What do you think? No, really?" keep reading. If you do decide to take this difficult road, please do not hesitate to tell me what you think! Even if you think that it was the worst thing you have ever read in your life and you'll never read anything I write ever again. I seriously want to know and it helps with editing too. :D

I'm not going to put a synopsis here because there's a little bit of one over in front of the first chapter so you can know a little bit of what you might be getting yourself into.

In short, if you are interested in reading Following Orders, please do. This is sort of an experiment because I've never done anything like post a really long story on here before. I think the longest I did was three parts...? Anyway, after the posts on "To Write or Not to Write: Broken" a few people asked me for the rest of it. Full disclosure, I do not have the rest of it. It's not written. I will tell you that I am interested in maybe returning to the idea and refreshing the plot but it is way back in line. Like, way, way, way back.

Bunny trail over.

This will be a full novel - all of it on here and all of it written. It tends to get finished more when it's assigned for school. :D So I hope you like it!

-Kira

P.S. I'm just going to give full credit to Mommy for this idea. I never would have thought to post a novel on here if she hadn't suggested it. And I love the idea! Thanks Mommy!