Pride and Prejudice
and Zombies

by Jane Austen
and Seth Grahame-Smith

Even the cover design reflects Grahame-Smith’s general method. The copyright page attributes the portrait of a young lady to the Bridgeman Art Library, but also credits the book designer for “cover zombification.”

Clearly, the cut-throat marriage market of Regency England needed more literal throat cutting.

As the book’s first line now reads, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”  And so it goes.  Seth Grahame-Smith (author of several odd-looking books — seriously, check Amazon) has opened Jane Austen’s text and brought in an army of the undead.  Ever wondered why Netherfield was vacant in the first place and ready for Mr. Bingley to move in?  Zombies.  Obviously.


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Categories: books
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Here’s the disclaimer, folks:  this is me blathering about a couple of lesser-known books by one of my long-time favorite fantasy authors.  I first picked up some of Patricia C. Wrede’s books some time in middle school, and have been lending them to all my friends ever since.  (Seriously.  Was there anyone who didn’t borrow the Enchanted Forest Chronicles in high school?)  Hell, as Carmen can tell you, I even made friends through those books.  That makes them magic.  I also adore her Regency-England-but-with-magic books.  As far as I’m concerned, Wrede is one of the masters of YA fantasy.  (And as long as it’s well-written, I see no reason ever to grow out of YA books entirely.)

Some of Wrede’s earliest books are set in a secondary world called Lyra, and it’s two of these that have been hanging out on my shelf for a few years now:  The Harp of Imach Thyssel and The Raven Ring.  For whatever reason, I hadn’t read them until last week — or at least, I hadn’t read Harp.  I think Elf also has a copy of Ring and let me borrow it once in high school, but I remembered only the barest shadow of the story.  Like the cereal ad used to say, taste it again, for the first time.  (Ahh, brain sludge.)

Although the two books share the same fantasy world, each stands completely on its own, set in different parts of the world and with no characters in common.  They’re also separated by almost ten years of real world time (during which Wrede was writing many of the books we all enjoyed).  If you read them back to back, it’s easy to see how much Wrede improves as a writer between Harp (1985) and Ring (1994).

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Categories: books
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Pug and I discovered this week that we have a dollar theater across the street.  (For a loose definition of “across the street,” but you know, whatever.)  It’s in the same complex as our neighborhood Target and a former mall that’s now a private school (yes, weird).  For months, we’ve been driving past the sign for this place, but all it ever tells us is that Rocky Horror Picture Show is playing Saturday evening.

But Pug ran across the theater’s web site earlier this week, and sure enough, they’re a second-run theater, and they play all sorts of things beyond Rocky Horror.  And this week they were playing Watchmen, which we hadn’t seen yet, so we went.

The theater is an empty place on a Tuesday night, the lobby dark and cavernous.  Walls plastered up and down with old movie posters.  You could have a long game of “I spy the poster for such-and-so” in that lobby.  You’d be sitting on fat red sofas and armchairs scattered around the lobby, or maybe perched on the stairs leading up to… the projection rooms, I assume.  I don’t know why the staircase was in the middle of the lobby.  There were signs apologizing for air conditioning problems in some of the theaters — from the fan in the back of ours, we assumed we were in one of the afflicted rooms.  But there were few enough people there, it didn’t even get unpleasant.

And the movie itself?  Read on…


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Categories: comics, desert living, movies
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I want to write, I really do.

So here I am with all this time on my hands — enough time to really try my hand at something crazy like a novel or something — and all of my ideas in progress sound lame and boring.  My weakness at plotting has me by the ankle, and none of my characters wants to say anything.

Can I go somewhere to buy shiny new ideas, please?

I’ve never seen any writing advice that didn’t start with “You have to actually write.  A lot.”  So if the fiction gears aren’t working, I’m just going to babble here until they start to move.  Because moping here isn’t doing anybody any good.

Categories: scribblings
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Pug and I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night, and I am declaring it a Good One.

And I’d say the Trek community was overdue for a Good One, so thank you, Great Bird of the Galaxy.

My biggest worry about this film was that the characters would seem like strangers.  That it wouldn’t feel like Star Trek and that the whole effect would be laughable.  But while there were a few moments when my suspension of disbelief was stretched a little far (space diving?  magic unfolding sword?), on the whole, I couldn’t be more pleased.

All our old friends were recognizable, despite having new faces, and they acted and spoke the way one expected them to.  Kirk is a reckless adventurer.  Spock is logical, conflicted, and is quickly developing a martyr complex.  McCoy doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with space travel.  And so forth.  The instant – but not unconditional – bond between Kirk and McCoy worked, and the gradual development of their relationship with Spock unfolded well.  None of it, mind you, quite the way I pictured it, but it worked and was consistent with the characters, and I liked it.

And I always love it when the other recurring characters get to come out of the shadows a bit.  Uhura got to show her chops at xenolinguistics.  Chekov has apparently become a boy genius – not too much of a stretch, since in the original series, he sometimes fills in for Spock at the science station.  (Although… I do want to know what a seventeen-year-old who isn’t Wesley Crusher is doing on the bridge of a starship.)  And Simon Pegg’s Scotty was a lot of fun, though I had trouble looking at him and thinking “Scotty” instead of “Simon Pegg.”

Some of the accents were a little… interesting.  Simon Pegg and Anton Yelchin probably had more authentic accents as Scotty and Chekov than their predecessors ever did, and though Chekov’s was a little strong, I thought the effect was charming.  McCoy’s accent seemed to come and go and never sounded quite right to me, but given that Karl Urban is a New Zealander, and was otherwise wonderful, I’m willing to give that a pass.

For those who would prefer to avoid spoilers, I’ll hide everything else behind the cut, but I do recommend reviews of the film from NPR and the New York Times, neither of which give away anything you won’t have gleaned from the trailers already.

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Categories: Star Trek, movies
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Brutus:
Remember March, the Ides of March remember:
Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake?
What villain touch’d his body, that did stab,
And not for justice? What! shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world
But for supporting robbers,–shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes
And sell the mighty space of our large honours
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.

- Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, IV iii

Hope you all had a pleasant Pi Day yesterday!  Real news coming soon-ish someday.

Categories: Shakespeare
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The biggest news of the day is that Pug’s sister-in-law gave birth this morning to a baby boy who, coincidentally, is going to share a first name with my youngest brother.  We got to go visit this evening and hold the baby!  Everyone is doing fine, and the baby is beautiful.

*          *          *

Pug and I spent Saturday putting wedding invitations together.  Short of making the paper (haha) we’ve done pretty much everything ourselves.  I designed everything (becaue I have InDesign and I know how to use it!), and though we were going to have things printed at Kinko’s, that didn’t pan out.  Their straight-through black and white printers aren’t able to handle half-sheet size paper.  The color printer could, funnily enough, but then you have to pay color prices (i.e., five times as much), when you’re just using black.  Which is ridiculous.

So rather than doing the research to find other print shops, we decided we could handle them ourselves.  The only issue was that, since we don’t have a straight-through printer, the sheets came out with a decided curl, but that’s nothing a bit of ironing can’t solve.  Um, yes, you read that correctly.  We ironed our invitations.  Hey, whatever works, right?  We set up our little assembly line, Pug printed return address labels while I addressed envelopes, and it all got done with a quickness.  They’ll go in the mail on Tuesday.  And after sitting in the envelopes for a couple days, they’re actually lying quite flat.  Ha-ha!

*          *          *

I’ve decided that the easiest way to handle Poke’s and my allergies with regard to wedding cake is what I call the Two Cake Solution (sort of like the two state solution, but less fighting and more sugar).  We’ll get a big, traditional wedding cake for our guests (Pug gets to be Chief Cake Taster, obviously), and I’m going to make a smaller, allergy-safe cake for those of us who need it (and anyone else who wants to snag a slice). Obviously, this creates the very important decision of finding the right cake recipe.  And obviously, this creates the absolute necessity of trying a variety of recipes.  Which obviously leads to eating cake.  Oh darn. Brides are supposed to obsess about dieting, you say?  Psssh.  Silly you.

Thus far, my two attempts have been tasty, but not winners, but I have high hopes for Number Three.  And if they start coming out pretty, I might even take pictures.  I haven’t yet bought proper cake pans with removable bottoms, so getting the cakes out of the pans has so far been a bit of a mess.

*          *          *

I’m about three-quarters of the way through Bleak House, and I’ve been enjoying it.  I recommend it so far, but know that it isn’t a book where things happen quickly.  It’s a book that brings you into its world, shows you around, introduces you to a wide variety of people, brings them together in different groupings, and lets you see what happens.  A leisurely, a few chapters here, a few chapters there, a few pages before bed sort of a read.

Categories: allergy, books, desert living
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Last Christmas, my brothers gave me the 2008 Dragonology calendar, which I assure you has been a great help this year in learning to identify dragons, read dragon script, and evaluate dragon treasure. The June page is a lesson on “Elementary Riddle Work,” though I hadn’t really noticed until I took the calender down this month — with all my moving about last summer, I didn’t have the calendar up anywhere during the month of June.

Anyway, the page is covered in riddles, some of which I’d seen before and some that I hadn’t.  I know a bunch of you are riddle fans, so I thought I would share.  I’ll put the answer in white text below the riddle so you won’t see the answer unless you highlight it.

What does man love more than life,
Fear more than death or mortal strife,
What the poor have, the rich require,
And what contented men desire,
What misers spend, and spendthrifts save,
And all men carry to the grave?
Nothing

Weight in my belly,
Trees on my back,
Nails in my ribs,
Feet I do lack.
A ship

The wave, over the wave, a weird thing I saw,
Through-wrought, and wonderful ornate:
A wonder on the waves, water become bone.
Ice

Oft I must strive with wind and wave, battle them both when under the sea.
I feel out the bottom, a foreign land. In lying still, I am strong in the strife;
If I fail in that, they are stronger than I, and wrenching me loose, soon put me to rout.
They wish to capture what I must keep. I master them both if my grip holds out.
If the rocks bring succor and lend support, strength in the struggle. Ask me my name!
An anchor

The part of the bird that is not in the sky,
which can swim in the ocean and always stay dry.
Its shadow

What gets wetter the more it dries?
A towel

The Riddle of the Sphinx: What goes on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?
A person

Only one color, but not one size,
Stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies,
Present in sun, but not in rain,
Doing no harm and feeling no pain.
A shadow

What force and strength cannot get through
I with a gentle touch can do,
And many in the street would stand,
Were I not a friend at hand.
A key

Round like an apple, deep like a cup,
Yet all the king’s horses can’t pull it up.
A well

Old Mother Twitchet had one eye,
And a long tail that she let fly,
And every time she went through a gap
She left a bit of her tail in the trap.
A needle and thread

Long legs, bandy thighs,
A little head, and no eyes.
A pair of tongs

In marble walls as white as milk,
Lined with skin as soft as silk,
Within a fountain crystal clear,
A golden apple does appear.
No doors are there to this stronghold–
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.
An egg

Black we are, and much admired,
Men seek for us if they’re tired.
We tire the horse, but comfort man,
Tell me this riddle if you can.
Coal

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits,
Kits, cats, sacks, wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?
One

A hill-full, a hole-full,
You cannot catch a bowl-full.
Mist or fog

Little Nancy Etticoat,
In a white petticoat,
With a red nose,
The longer she stands,
The shorter she grows.
A candle

Black within and red without,
With four corners round about.
A chimney

Categories: miscellany
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Looks to me that Masterpiece Theater is going to be good for the foreseeable future.

They’ve been doing Tess of the D’Urbervilles the last two weeks, which I missed, though apparently they’re now putting the episodes online, in a limited-time-only kind of way.  So that one is still available, though it’s also four hours long.  I read Tess a few years ago, in the quiet evenings of my summer in New Hampshire.  I remember being captivated by it, and then somewhat frustrated by the ending.

This week and next are Wuthering Heights (clocking in at a total of a mere two and a half hours).  That was one of my big reads this summer, so I’m interested to see what they did with it.  I’m a little confused about how the book makes it onto lists of “greatest love stories of all time” when the main characters seem to resist all attempts at being made likable.  He’s a brute, she’s neurotic, everyone’s miserable.  Amusingly, in some ways it was the inverse of Tess, in that I liked the way it ended.

After that, MT is running the Sense and Sensibility that they used as part of the Jane Austen love fest of last year.  My preferred adaptation is still the Emma Thompson/Kate Winslet one, but this one’s good too.

And we’re getting Dickens adaptations for the rest of the spring!  Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, and The Old Curiosity Shop.  I’ve seen Oliver! (the movie musical) and I’ve been to the “Old Curiosity Shop,” but otherwise this is all new to me.

Looks like when the show turns back into Mystery! for the summer, we’re getting a few more Miss Marple stories, too.  I always enjoy those — the little old lady sleuth is so delightfully unexpected.

Categories: books, television
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Well, a happy new year to you all!  Pug and I were fortunate in that we were able to spend a nice long time at home over the holidays and got to spend time with many of you!  (…she says, having only a vague idea of who might actually be reading this.)  And having been sufficiently poked about having not posted here since Halloween, here we go again!

It’s sunny and gorgeous here in the lovely southwest — cool enough to pull out jackets and maybe some sweaters, but warm enough to enjoy the outdoors.  This is great.  I love cute jackets.

Since late September, I’ve had a freelance writing/editing gig going with a company that produces vacation planning materials.  I’m still hoping for a local, full-time publishing niche to open up, but having this for the time being is very nice.  It keeps me from sitting here bored, it keeps me from getting rusty, and of course the pay is appreciated as well.

Wedding planning is moving along smoothly.  In addition to the ceremony location and the reception location, we now also have a minister and a pair of classical guitarists to play at the ceremony.  I have my dress, shoes, and veil in my closet, and Poke even has her bridesmaid dress.  (We settled on a shade of burgundy that the dressmaker decided to call “wine.”  It’s pretty.)  Next up are tux rentals and invitations, and after that, we’ll get to flowers and cake.

Pug and I are continuing our leisurely re-watch of the ever genius Babylon 5, in which we’re ready to start season 3.  We’ve also been watching the season 1 DVDs of The Big Bang Theory, which were a Christmas gift — his parents’ way of insisting that he really would enjoy it (and, of course, he does).  And one of these days I’m going to get him caught up on the current season of How I Met Your Mother.  I’m not usually much for sitcoms, but those two I like a lot.

Speaking of which, I have been “moonlighting on another blog,” as Courtney sneakily pointed out on my last post.  Courtney, my Boston roommate, has been keeping a TV review blog called Raked for about a year and a half, and I sometimes get in on the fun through ridiculously long comments on the Heroes posts and guest-blogging about How I Met Your Mother.  We enjoy it, and apparently other people out there read it too!  Amazing. I don’t use the same handles I use here, but you’d recognize me.

On the literary front, once I finished the pile of various vampire books, I moved into a category of “other people’s extra copies” — many thanks to the generosity of my friends!  I finally went back to Dune, which I  started (barely) months ago, read on the plane at Christmas time, and finally finished shortly after getting back.  It’s a neat book and I enjoyed it a great deal, but the story didn’t really start to move for me until Stilgar and his group find Paul and Jessica in the desert.  From there to the end, I was hooked.   I would ask those of you who’ve read the book, though: is it just my preference for micro over macro, or did you find Herbert’s descriptions of hand-to-hand combat more effective than his large battle scenes?  It was clear to me from the first description of training exercises in the early chapters that Herbert could write a duel, and I thought the later, higher stakes ones were captivating. Regardless, I enjoyed the subtle machinations throughout, and was very impressed by the …unique-ness of the world Herbert created.

After Dune, I flew through The Eyre Affair, a book-lover’s sci-fi mystery madness, if there ever was one!  Set in the England of an alternate universe in which the Crimean War has lasted over 130 years and French revisionists seem to be altering not just the history but the actual past, a woman named Thursday Next works for a branch of detectives who solve literary crimes and briefly gets trapped inside the story of Jane Eyre.  Hilariously good fun! I figured out the parallel between an aspect of Thursday’s life and of Jane’s well before Thursday did, which I enjoyed.  Perhaps the only weak spot in the book is that the bad guys (an unsophisticated term, but utterly appropriate) are far less intersting than the good guys.

My next read is Bleak House, by Dickens, because January seems the right time of year to read it.  (I intended to last year, but there was the whole grad school plus full-time job madness going on at the time.)  I picked up a second-hand copy a couple of years ago and it’s been calling to me to read it…  I haven’t read any Dickens except for picking up A Tale of Two Cities in high school (I’ve never even actually read A Christmas Carol) so it’s high time I started filling in some of those gaps.

Categories: books, desert living, home, television
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