Happy Come and Take It Day

Today the nation and the world celebrates Come and Take It Day, an annual observance of the twinned arts of curb pickin’ and Dumpster divin’. As our part in this bargain bacchanal, the UI Press is holding another of its HUGE sales, with e-books and the knowledge therein to be had on the mega-cheap. Nationalism, colonialism, booze: seriously, it’s all here, the perfect chance to put down your $2.99 in American in order to expand your mind and consciousness.

Unrelatedly, it also Jane Day, marking the first publication of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. We all have our favorite Brontë sister. Charlotte, Emily, Anne, Zsa Zsa, Eva, Jan, and Hepzibah—really, it’s hard to pick. The UIP title The Disappearance of God delves into the thought of Emily, author of Wuthering Heights and passages like the following:

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Healthcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.