Prise & Prejudice...and Zombies!

I've never considered myself to be a particularly girly girl. In fact, for the majority of my youth I was a consummate tomboy, swearing off things like lace, dolls, the color pink, and other decidedly girlish trappings. But I think there is one aspect of feminine identity that transcends any kind of personal choice, except maybe in the most extreme cases of butchness and/or illiteracy: Jane Austen.

She wrote several novels, but when someone talks about liking Jane Austen, they are really saying that they like Pride and Prejudice, her most celebrated book. I, like nearly all other members of my gender, have read Pride and Prejudice multiple times. I cannot explain this, it's not even in my top ten of favorite books, but I think I've re-read it more times than I have re-read any other book. I've seen every incarnation of the story in movie form as well, multiple times (well, except for Kate and Leopold, which is obviously the most open-mouthed kiss of a piece of fanfiction as I have ever heard of). This affinity for Austen is a firmly feminine constant, I've never even known a dude (and I've come across plenty of fey little English major type boys) who ever mentions having read her, certainly never one that speaks openly about enjoying her.

And speaking of Pride and Prejudice fanfiction, pictured above is the newest object of my reading pleasure, Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I bought this a few weeks ago for my zombie fiction-loving husband's recent birthday; he was appropriately excited and, honestly, the cover and title alone made it a good gift, although he was not prepared for the quasi-Austen-like writing style. Grahame-Smith seems to be an actual male who has actually read P&P; he seems to get the tenor and spirit of Austen's overly-fussy Victorian dialogue more or less right, although he tends towards the Yoda-esque in his turns of phrase, and doesn't exactly embrace things like correct or sensible sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation.

Overall it is as silly as silly parody books go. I'm happily reading it as in-between fodder material before I start another sober biography or something, and it is certainly not disappointing me yet. I will admit that the first line really pulled me in:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."