To be frank, I can’t articulate many absolute favorites. If you ask me for my favorite movie, or song or ice cream flavor, I’m HARD PRESSED to name just one. I can give you a list of favorites NOW or favorites THEN or “This is my favorite eye shadow for 4 am because it makes me look NOT DEAD but this is my favorite for going out at night because it has sparkles.”

The exception to my rule is Favorite Book = Jane Eyre.

It’s been my favorite since I read it. I don’t even remember when that was, to tell you the truth. Sometime in University I think. it’s got EVERYTHING:

Romance! Mystery! Spooky happenings! Strong heroine! Snappy dialogue! Brooding atmosphere! Creepy Castle!

Did I mention the strong heroine? Jane Eyre is probably one of the strongest heroines, if not THE strongest heroine I’ve ever read. And she was written in 1847.

If you’ve never read Jane Eyre, here are some quotes from our dear heroine, Jane, to motivate you to pick it up:

• “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
• “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
• “I am not an angel,’ I asserted; ‘and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me – for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”

And from Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester

• “You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you; it is different ;- I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.”

And the quote that has FOREVER RUINED ME:

• “Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

He. Should take. To bleeding. Inwardly.

RUINED ME, I SAY!

This truly is my desert island book, my “You can only save one book and must leave the rest” book, my “I’m feeling low and sick and need something to curl up with” book.

I think I need to clear my weekend to read this again.