I’d been meaning to read Pride and Prejudice for quite awhile (as in years), just to see what all of the fuss is about.  It’s one of those classics that everyone talks about, and I just felt like it was one of the books that Must Be Read. In fact, I’m not entirely sure how I made it through high school and college without reading it. I’ve tried other Austen books in the past, but to be honest, none of them ever knocked my socks off.  In fact, the word torturous comes to mind. But when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies came out I thought “aha!  I’ll read both books. Simultaneously. It’ll be fun.”  P&P&Z was to be both my inspiration and my reward. Boy was I deluding myself.

And okay, so maybe the first line did make me laugh:

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

You’ll notice that wasn’t the first line of plain old P&P.  In fact, plain old P&P puts me to sleep.  For example:

This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was caught by Elizabeth, and as it assured her that Darcy was not less answered for Wickham’s absence than if her first surmise had been just, every feeling of displeasure against the former was so sharpened by immediate disappointment that she could hardly reply with tolerable civility to the polite inquires which he directly afterwards approached to make.

Aaaaaaaaaaggghhhh.  At this point, I was hoping for the zombies to come and eat Austen, Elizabeth, Darcy and me.

I’ve been joking that my dislike for this book could get me kicked out of book bloggerdom, but good grief…it’s wordy and gossipy and I CAN”T STAND IT ANYMORE. After 76 pages, I’m calling it quits. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be a brilliant piece of social satire, and a comedy, and just about everybody but me thinks this is the best book. Ever. But I’m not laughing. Heck, I’m not even interested.

And I’m afraid the zombies are getting the axe, too.  I found P&P&Z way too similar to the original…in fact, I felt like I was simply rereading P&P. And that’s about as much fun as recreating Isaac Newton’s experiment where he sticks a knife in his eye. Yes, there were zombies, but they were token zombies.  It got old pretty fast. In fact, I only made it to page 43 in that one.

I’m still digging the cover, though.

Lies My Teacher Told Me (audio book)
James Loewen
Narrated by Brian Keeler
book published in 1995
14.75 hours

To be fair, I was expecting something different from this book. I thought it would focus on, well, on lies my teacher told me. And it did talk about lies. In fact, the beginning of the book was quite interesting (Helen Keller was a socialist! And Woodrow Wilson was racist!). But then, the author digressed into a long (and I do mean long) rant about everything that is wrong with how American history is taught in high schools. Thing is, I mostly agree with him. But see, I didn’t buy the book (which I never read) and then the audio book only to hear him drone on and on and on. And okay, Loewen wasn’t the narrator, but Brian Keeler did such a fantastic job of sounding like these were his own ideas that the two will forever be linked in my mind. Oh, and Keeler had a really bad case of Alex Trebek disease (you know, over-pronunciation of foreign words?). Although he said Oregon wrong, which was enough to make me to yell back the correct pronunciation (Ore-uh-gun), which I’m sure was entertaining if you happened to be driving next to me at the time.

So, I’m rambling. Are you still with me? Here are a few more irritants:

• Over-use of the word heroification. I got it the first time.
• This phrase: “Steadfast reader, we are about to do something no high school American history class has ever accomplished in the annals of American education: reach the end of the textbook.” First, how do you know no one has never done it? And second, don’t say something like this when there are three (3!) more chapters left in your own book. Plus an afterword. It gives a reader false hope that the end is near. And that’s just mean.
• Taking the African concept of living dead (sasha) (and that does not mean zombie, btw) and applying it to your own idea and then using the word sasha 99 bajillion times in the course of a chapter. Just say living dead. Did you learn nothing from beating heroification into the ground?
• Speaking of beating things into the ground. Columbus was not a hero. Yes, I got it the first time. And the second. And the third. After that, it’s hella boring.
• You’re a sociologist. You should say that. Because making people think you’re a historian is wrong. Especially when you harp on the education system that I do believe you never taught in (college doesn’t count). Then when they find out you’re a sociologist, you lose credibility. And then they start picking on your book.

Okay, as mentioned earlier, I did learn some interesting things, but the book turned out to be a big disappointment, mostly for the reasons (rants?) listed above.

This has been sitting on my bookshelf for 3 years, so I decided that even though it’s about American history, I’m using it towards the World Citizen Challenge. Because there should be a reward for torture, right?

********************

I’ve already bagged on Christopher Moore, but I’m about to do it some more. Because is there anything worse than when a favorite author goes horribly astray?

Plus, I’m pissed that I spent money for this crap.

Oh, and warning…there will be some cursing. Because it’s hard to review a book filled with cursing without tossing in a few swears yourself.

I was really looking forward to Fool, because it’s a take-off of King Lear, and I thought that Moore’s interpretation of Shakespeare was bound to be hysterical. I mean, look what he did to Jesus (Lamb, in case you’re unfamiliar with the Moore pantheon…and I know pantheon is the wrong word, but it just sounds so good).

But no. Instead, we have a book that insults women, gays, the French, the English and pretty much anything else that can be insulted (witches, ghosts, the Church, the poor trees who get bonked by Fool’s apprentice). It’s dialogue is a bad combination of Austin Powers (think shaggalicious), teenage boys talking about sex, and made-up words. Oft-repeated made-up words. If we took out all the references to the fucking French (because every time the word French appears it’s prefaced with fucking) and sex, the book would be about 100 pages long.

And yes, I know it’s supposed to be a farce. But page after page of crude and insulting language does not a farce make. It’s doesn’t even make a book. It makes crap.

And I’m the Fool, since I actually read the damn thing.

Trouble the Water
Nicole Seitz
March 2008
296 pages

Meh. The best thing about this book is that it was a quick read. Of course, it was quick because I didn’t linger on any of the words or passages. And I’m going to give away a bit of the plot, so don’t read this review if you ever plan to read the book.

Set on St. Anne Island, a fictional South Carolina coastal island, the story centers around Honor Maddox. Honor has arrived on St. Anne’s, depressed and broke. After her rescue by a bunch of Gullah nannies, she is turned over to the Duchess, an eccentric widow with plenty of room in her big house. She takes in Honor and the two opposites proceed to become BFF.

Then suddenly, jump forward a few months. Honor is in the hospital and her sister Alice is reading a letter Honor wrote to her, recalling her past mistakes and the happiness she found on St. Anne’s. Of course, Honor dies and Alice follows in her footsteps to find happiness on St. Anne’s. Big surprise.

I found the characters shallow. They didn’t seem fully developed and I would have liked more information on their background. The story skipped back and forth between time and narrators. I was able to follow it initially, but the switch to Alice reading Honor’s letter was jarring. I also thought the Gullah nannies were there just to add some local culture…why did they all have to be nannies? And why did they have to speak with such thick accents, when the other (white) characters had none? This bothered me. I also saw the childhood sexual trauma from a mile away, so there were no surprises there. And the ending was way too trite. And wow, I’m being pretty harsh. But the book was a disappointment…good thing it was a library book.

However…Amy loved it. So if you’d like to read the total opposite of my review, go read Amy’s.