Well, if you read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you get pride, prejudice, and zombies, all for the price of one. Normally they sell pride and prejudice as a package deal, but in a special recession deal, they're throwing in zombies for free.
She's not just a blob of energy, she's also a 14-year-old hormone bomb.
Spike ,'The Killer In Me'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Polter-Cow - Apr 24, 2009 1:02:17 pm PDT #8983 of 28413
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Sheryl - Apr 24, 2009 1:12:46 pm PDT #8984 of 28413
Fandom means never having to say "But where would I wear that?"
Thomas Hardy? :shudders:
(Sorry, I still remember having to dissect Return of the Native in high school. Not pleasant)
JZ - Apr 24, 2009 1:17:41 pm PDT #8985 of 28413
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.
Just one? Persuasion. Old, sad, wise, meditative and thoughtful, with secret letters and dark pasts and regrets and quiet kindnesses and sidelong glances and selfish assholes who don't get nearly enough comeuppance and a great older couple and Jane Austen hating on Bath.
YMMV, but I'd avoid the illustrated version with drawings by Hugh Thomson -- he somehow makes Captain Wentworth, who ought to be handsome in a nice scruffy Wesley-without-the-giant-scary-insanity-issues way, look kind of domesticated and cute. Bleh.
eta: Okay, to be fair, I went and Googled it up, and the last picture of Wentworth looks all right. Still not my favorite set of Austen illustrations.
Laga - Apr 24, 2009 1:40:31 pm PDT #8986 of 28413
You should know I'm a big deal in the Resistance.
So am I hearing correctly that if one has never read Austen one might start with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and get a proper feel for the original material but with bonus zombies? I was under the impression that it was for folks who had already read the original.
Polter-Cow - Apr 24, 2009 1:43:20 pm PDT #8987 of 28413
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Laga, I think 80% of it is the original text, so it will definitely give you a feel for the original.
Amy - Apr 24, 2009 2:09:10 pm PDT #8988 of 28413
Because books.
Part of me thinks I loved Emma as much as I did *because* I read it in a class with a fabulous teacher, and the discussion was great.
Same with Tess -- I did a paper on it junior year of high school, and then made my teacher cry in class because she was losing an argument with me about it. (I wasn't trying to make her cry, though. That was actually a little unsettling, much as I disliked her.)
Frankenbuddha - Apr 24, 2009 2:29:30 pm PDT #8989 of 28413
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"
Honestly - the two writers I hated being subjected to in high school: Dickens and Annie Dillard.
Dear lord, I could not get through Great Expectations to save my life, and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was the most Hippy Dippy piece of shit I've ever had to endure. Ptui!
JZ - Apr 24, 2009 2:50:21 pm PDT #8990 of 28413
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was the most Hippy Dippy piece of shit I've ever had to endure. Ptui!
FINALLY. THANK GOD. Definitive proof that you and Hec are clearly, firmly two distinct and separate persons!
beth b - Apr 24, 2009 2:55:57 pm PDT #8991 of 28413
oh joy! Oh Rapture ! I have a brain!
I was never fond of things like hardy and wuthering heights -- overly dramatic. And while I did read Austen early, I agree that it improves as I age.
Consuela - Apr 24, 2009 3:04:24 pm PDT #8992 of 28413
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix
Hardy is just waaay too depressing for me. Austen has its depressing bits, but it's papered over with the wonderful mild snark. I saw a writer recently claim that from a feminist perspective, Austen is a horror writer (because of the desperate need to marry: Charlotte Lucas being a case in point).
I liked Jane Eyre but Wuthering Heights makes me roll my eyes: they're all such drama queens, and unpleasant people to boot.
I have never read Pilgram at Tinker Creek but I loved Dillard's An American Childhood and The Living was very good indeed, if a bit bleak.