Tuesday, July 27, 2010

monster madness

For me, summer means summer reading, and summer reading means easy to read, entertaining, no thought required books. And as much as I scoff at it, the recent trend for putting zombies and vampires into everything has caught me in its grip. I have been particularly drawn to retellings of Jane Austen novels, of course, but I'm not limiting my options. My list so far includes:

- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: A book I have recommended to Austen fans and non-Austen fans alike.

- Mr. Darcy, Vampyre: I gave this one an "eh" for storyline, but a "read it" for the lovely descriptions of Europe.

- Jane Bites Back: Jane Austen is a vampire running a bookshop in New York and gets caught up in a mystery. I enjoyed this because it made fun of itself and other Jane Austen fad books that are capitalizing on the craze.

- Vampire Darcy's Desire: Mr. Darcy, Vampyre is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, while this book is a wonderful retelling of P&P with a vampire curse and more explicit romance than Jane would ever have written.

- Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter: I was just browsing the New Releases at the library and I couldn't resist. The first half is a historical buildup, and the second half brings out the monsters.

And the next on my ever-growing list of monster-infused classic literature is Mansfield Park and Mummies.

It's not amazing stuff, but I just can't stop.

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