Quirk Classics, the publisher of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
is coming out with a new book March 23, 2010 called Dawn of the Dreadfuls. It is a prequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and will tell how Elizabeth Bennett achieves the character in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
I have not read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies so I am not exactly sure what to expect in the prequel but I am excited for it nonetheless. I am reading Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters though, so I know the kind of attitude to expect. These books are playful and fun, although they do move away from some of the main concepts in the originals.
There has been a lot of discussion about the Quirk Classics books. Many people feel that they are cheap because they are ripping off books that are already famous to secure their own success. Some people have said that they feel the books are thrown together and the insertions of zombies or sea monsters doesn't feel complete. I see the merit in these arguments, but I do like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters so far, I feel like it's a nice break in my pretty serious and dense reading schedule. I'll say more about that in my review of the book next week, so check back soon!
Has anyone else read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or have strong thoughts on Quirk Classics?
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is an interesting take on Jane Austen's first published novel. It mostly sticks to the original. Marianne is passionate and romantic, and she quickly falls in love with Willoughby. Elinor is sensible and logical. When she finds out that Lucy Steele is engaged to her love interest, Edward Ferrars she never lets on her disappointment to her family even though it is constantly weighing her down. She even gets her friend, Colonel Brandon, to help Edward when he is cast out from his family for being engaged to Lucy who is of a lower class. The only new introduction is of course the sea monsters.
Margaret, the youngest Dashwood sister, has a much larger presence in this than in the original. She is constantly shouting "K'yaloh D'argesh F'ah" which no one seems to understand. This and Elinor's dreams and visions about a five pointed star and the searing pain that accompanies them are the main changes that made me want to finish the novel. I was glad to find out what they meant at the end, but it took me some time to get through the middle of the book.
My favorite change is Elinor's attitude. She becomes much more cheeky in this version. I really admire Winters for making this change because I always felt Elinor was a little cheekier than she comes across in the original. There is also a great concentration on the word monstrous, which is used frequently in the original but takes on new meaning when they are living in a world surrounded by sea monsters. Colonel Brandon becomes quite monstrous himself in this version because his face is covered with squishy tentacles. This exchange with Mrs. Jennings really got me into the book:
Mrs. Jenning soon came in. "Oh! Colonel," said she, with her usual noisy cheerfulness,"I am monstrous glad to see you--" Elinor gasped audibly at the inauspicious word choice. Brandon looked at his hands, and even the usually imperturbable Mrs. Jennings blanched at her poor choice of words. "Ah yes, sorry, I am very glad to see you--I didn't mean monstrous glad, as in--not to imply that you are--sorry--beg your pardon, but I have been forced to look about me a litle, and settle my matters; for it is a long while since I have been at home. But pray, Colonel, how came you to conjure out that I should be in the Sub-Station today?" (153).
There seems to be a lot of mixed feelings about Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and I can understand why. At times it doesn't feel like an adaption but more like poking fun at Austen and Victorian London. If you haven't read the original, do so. If I hadn't read the original I don't think I could have got through this book because my love for the original characters is what really kept me reading. Overall it was a nice break from other books I've read but I would only give a 3/5.
Pub. Date: September 2009 Publisher: Quirk Publishing Format: Paperback, 343pp
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Thanks to J. Kaye's Book Blog I'm going to start posting what I'm reading this week and what I've recently finished.
Finished
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is a classic novel that I read for my Prose By Women Writers class. This is the kind of book I typically enjoy though (I'm a Jane Eyre fanatic) so it was more fun than work for me. My favorite aspect of the book is that it allowed the working class to speak for themselves, a rarity in Victorian literature. Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One by Kaoru Mori is a great graphic novel that I found out about last week. I promptly purchased Volumes One and Three from Daydream Comics in Iowa City, they unfortunately didn't have Volume Two. The graphic novel is based in Victorian London and is about a romance between a male of the gentry and a maid. Mori does an amazing job capturing several aspects of Victorian society, I will be posting a review this week.
And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander is a mystery novel that I could not put down, although to be fair I was reading it during Dewey's Readathon. It is a Victorian mystery about a woman who falls in love with her husband after his death... or is he really dead? I will be posting a review this week.
Currently Reading Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters. I just finished Sense and Sensibility for class so I'm excited for this modern spin.
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is a Victorian sensation novel
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is a mystery I'm reading for Barnes and Noble's Literature By Women Book Club.
Since I forgot about doing a What I'm Reading Monday post yesterday I figured I'd make up for it today.
Finished Lady Audley's Secret
is a Victorian sensation novel. I posted a review yesterday which you can read here.
Still Reading Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
is a Quirk Classic edition of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I should finish it in the next couple days.
Started Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
by Jan Morris is a travel novel about the city of Trieste. Trieste is in Italy, but it has the cultures of many countries in it because it has kind of been passed between surrounding countries. Morris mostly discusses the "nowhereness" of the place.
A Little Princess (Unabridged Classics)
by Frances Hodgson Burnett is my first read for Shelf Discovery.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is a mystery I'm reading for Barnes and Noble's Literature By Women Book Club.
I've really been enjoying Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
by Ben H. Winters and Jane Austen. Since I haven't finished it yet but am in an Austeny mood this morning I thought I'd share the book trailer. Hopefully I'll get a book review up next week but for now happy parody!
Today I got the Honest Scrap award from one of my favorite blogs, Sasha & the Silverfish. This my first time with the Honest Scrap (or any award/meme) so I am very excited! There are a few rules for this award, they are as follows:
1. The Honest Scrap Blogger Award must be shared. 2. The recipient has to tell 10 (true) things about themselves that no one else knows. 3. The recipient has to pass on the award to 7 more bloggers. 4. Those 7 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them.
Okay so ten true things about myself. Hmm, I'm sorry to say that I am not very interesting but I will do my very best to wow you with tales of my exciting life.
1. My Grandma taught me how to read and therefore jump started my entire life. She is my idol and we share the same birthday. She also got me started on a couple of my other obsessions: baking and crossword puzzles. One of my favorite books she read to me when I was a kid was The Three Little Pigs. She read to me first and eventually when I caught on I would read it to her while she made breakfast. 2. My favorite part about elementary school was book borders. My parents gave me a limit and I would go insane trying to figure out which books I wanted. Not much has changed since then, except now they're not called bookorders they're called BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com. Yeah... 3. When Harry Potter came out I swore it was a crappy book. I read the first ten pages and didn't like it. A couple years later I started the first one again and became addicted to it. I then became a bigger Harry Potter fan than any of my friends. Just another tidbit, I was in Europe when the last book came out, so I have the British copy. Very exciting. 4. The scenario in #3 was repeated with Jane Austen. I spent all of high school hating Jane Austen, then I read Sense and Sensibility last year and now I am obsessed with her. 5. I have read On The Road by Jack Kerouac seven times. It's the first book I've ever read that mentions Iowa, and I think this might contribute to my obsession with it. Somehow seeing the name in print makes the place I live seem more legitimate. Kind of like the movie Adventureland and the six summers I worked at an amusement park called Adventureland (but that is a story for another day). 6. Last year I lived in this community at Iowa called the Iowa Writers Learning Community. It was basically two floors of freshman who qualified themselves as writers or did lots of drugs. It was pretty fun, but I didn't do that much writing until I took my first writing class second semester. It's kind of amazing how many different kinds of people lived there. 7. I thought I wanted to be an English teacher until my senior year in high school when I realized that I couldn't spend every day in a high school since I'd spent all of high school waiting to get out. Still, people like me were generally my favorite teachers in high school. But still... no. 8. The books I gave my boyfriend to read so he could understand me were On the Road, Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, How to Be Good by Nick Hornby, and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. 9. Chuck Klosterman was the speaker during Iowa's welcome week last year and he signed my copy of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. He told me he liked my shirt, but I don't remember which shirt I was wearing. 10. Iowa City is a UNESCO City of Literature, and that's where I live if you didn't know. Because of this we have lots of readings every week. My favorite reading I have ever been to was a woman named Eula Biss. If you haven't read her essay collection Notes From No Man's Land you really should. It's fabulous.
So now I'm going to pass this on to seven other blogs. Helen Loves Books Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before Chasing Empty Pavements A Bookshelf Monstrosity Laura's Reviews Bookishly Fabulous Jenny Loves To Read
I really did not like Gemma Doyle at the beginning of A Great and Terrible Beauty. She bitched about everything, but in all honesty I bitched about everything when I was a teenager too. I kept that in mind when I was reading it, considering that I read this for my 19 Going on 20 Challenge. And she did grow, quite a bit really. So I was glad when I reached the end.
This is the first novel in the Gemma Doyle trilogy. Gemma is living in India with her mother and opium addicted father. She is sixteen and dying to go to school in London like a normal girl. What Gemma doesn't know is that she is not a normal girl, and her mother is not a normal woman. Her mother is keeping her in India for a very good reason. Of course, since she is a teenager none of this occurs to her and she just thinks her mother is out to get her. This is why she runs away from her in the market at the beginning of novel. She quickly becomes lost and when she looks to find her mother she has a painful vision. There is a man and her mother, and they are are both dying. This is when Gemma meets Kartik, a boy who cautions Emma against these visions she is having.
After her mother's death Gemma does go to school in London. It is 1895 and the school is Spence. The popular girls have their place, and Emma does not belong there. That is until she shows that she can play the game as well as any of them. She becomes friends with the rich and fashionable Felicity and Pippa, but only spends time with them if they will include Ann, Gemma's orphan roommate. I thought the friendship between the girls happened a little too quickly and a little too easily, but I did like how Felicity's character grew as the novel went on. It keeps you wondering if Felicity is really good or evil as she is obsessed with the idea of power.
My favorite aspect of this novel was how trapped the girls felt by the confines of marriage and society. I liked the idea of magic as an escape to this, even if I don't read a lot of fantasy novels (besides Harry Potter). I thought it was interesting to think that women or girls might dream of other realms or magic to save them from their doomed lives. I could definitely see Marianne from Sense and Sensibility coming up with something like this.
This novel earned a B.
Pub. Date: March 2005 Publisher: Random House Childrens Books Format: Paperback, 432 pp
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I had never seen the Sense and Sensibility (1995) trailer before because I was five when it came out so I thought I'd look it up. I'm finishing Sea Monsters tonight and it's making me have a greater appreciated for the original, I think I might watch the movie tomorrow.
Also, just about the greatest cast ever: Kate Winslet! Emma Thompson! Alan Rickman! Hugh Grant!
And just in case the trailer didn't make you want to watch it again...
So I have finished my first hour of the readathon, although it is actually hour seven. Finished Sense and Sensibility which I really consider a major accomplishment. I've also had some lunch.
Hour One
Books Read: Sense and Sensibility, kind of Pages Read: 43 (I read the Afterword too) Time Spent Reading: About one hour
Well I'm over halfway through. I'm actually pretty proud of myself because without the readathon I would not have gotten this much reading done this weekend. I've decided to leave Lady Audley's Secret for later because a) It is late b) I'm reading it for class c) I'm already way ahead. So I will read that tomorrow.
I think my next project is going to be And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie because I am reading it for the Barnes and Noble Literature by Women book club. I've had the book for years just sitting in a drawer so I'll give it a shot tonight. Eventually though I'm going to have to go to bd, but I don't think I'm quite ready yet.
Books Read: And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander Pages Read: 180 Total Books Read: And Only to Deceive Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One, and Sense and Sensibility (And I saw Where the Wild Things Are) Total Pages Read: 466
Books Read: Reading And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander Pages Read: 40 Total Books Read: Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One and Sense and Sensibility Total Pages Read: 286
Haven't made much progress because of dinner and I'm afraid I probably won't make much more progress for the rest of evening because I'm going to Where the Wild Things Are which is book related. I do plan on finishing And Only to Deceive tonight if possible. I'm looking forward to a more planned readathon in December thanks to Dreadlock Girl Reads. If nothing else I've enjoyed finding all of these great book blogs to look at in the future!
For those of you that like to write as well as read and love challenges, join National Novel Writing Month to try your hand at writing a novel! It starts November 1 and I will be participating in it. For more information go here.
I did end up falling asleep about halfway through And Then There Were None. I'm not sure of the exact time, but I'm going to guess I made it about sixteen hours, so that was pretty good. Next time I will go all out.
Books Read: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie Pages Read: 124 Total Books Read: Half of And Then There Were None, And Only to Deceive Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One, and Sense and Sensibility (And I saw Where the Wild Things Are) Total Pages Read: 590
Overall it was a great experience to read with so many other people. There are some awesome book blogs out there I wouldn't have found without this.
On a whim I went to one of my favorite used bookstores with a few friends today and found two books that I think will make my Victorian-Lit obsessed self very happy.
The first is Selected Letters by Jane Austen. I used to hate Jane Austen, even the Pride and Prejudice movie with Kiera Knightley (oh the horror!), but after reading Sense and Sensibility for class I'm starting to come around to her. Even though the basis of this blog is reading NOT for class and for enjoyment, it is really amazing how differently you see a book when you read it in a group.
The second is Disorderly Conduct by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, subtitle: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. I just about peed my pants when I saw this book because you can't believe how incredibly difficult it is to find books about the Victorian period in America. I also see that the book goes for over thirty dollars on Amazon and I got it for under five, so that alone makes it worthwhile.
You can look forward to reviews of these books in the coming weeks!
I woke up this morning to find that there is a 24 hour readathon going on today. I'm about five hours behind but I figure now is as good a time to start as any. I'm mostly going to be using this as an excuse to finish Sense and Sensibility for good. I've been promising myself to read the last thirty pages for about three weeks now and it just never happens. Then I plan to move on to the first volume of Emma: A Victorian Romance which I scored in Iowa City's Daydream comics yesterday. Once I finish both of those I think I will feel fairly accomplished. I'm at my parents house right now so I don't have a lot of my books with me, I'll probably just work on finishing the ones I've already started, Lady Audley's Secret and And Only to Deceive.
If you're interested in the readathon you can learn more and sign up here.
Books Read: Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One and a bit of Lady Audley's Secret Pages Read: 183 Total Books Read: Emma: A Victorian Romance Volume One and Sense and Sensibility Total Pages Read: 246
I had to stop to go to Target so I'm a little behind, I'll be getting in a little bit more now before dinner.
