Usually I’m not a fan of the “writers” that mooch off of the creativity of other authors…I’m thinking of Scarlett here – the disaster that nearly ruined Gone With the Wind for me.  But SethGrahame-Smith knows what he’s doing, with a little help from his friend, Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice and the Zombies. The book hit store shelves June 1st of this year and quickly climbed to the top 5 of the New York Times Best Seller list.  You can even find it at Urban Outfitters.  Now I’m not saying that popular = quality literature (far from it), but it certainly should be at the top of your summer reading list.  We’re talking prime Pop-Culture here!

I was almost instantly sucked into this gruesome classic love story.  Grahame-Smith has added an entire zombie population to the actual text of Jane  Austen’s beloved novel, Pride and Prejudice which sounds horrifying but is actually quite funny.  And did I mention the Bennet sisters are now zombie-slayers trained in Martial Arts?

This may seem crazy, but the zombies help to highlight the humorous points of Austen that can go unnoticed by the modern reader.  And there are slight plot alternations (no spoilers!) that are really satisfying for those of us that get really into our 19th Century literature.

This book is brought to you by Quirk Books - the publishers of “impractical reference and irreverent nonfiction”…oh yeah, and those Worst Case Survival Handbooks.

Happy Reading!

-B.C.Bodnar