An Awesome Announcement for Audiophiles

Do you love classics?
Do you love audiobooks?
Do you love getting free stuff???

Then Amazon's latest offer is perfect for you!

Basically, Amazon is trying to get the news out about their newest line of tablets (Kindle Fire HD) having whispersync technology, which syncs the e-book you're reading with the audiobook you're listening to. So if you want to continue listening to a book, but forgot your headphones at home, you can go ahead and keep reading and then the audiobook picks up your progress the next time you read. Pretty neat, no?

To spread the word, Amazon is offering 22 e-books for free download, PLUS the 22 corresponding audiobooks through combined Audible accounts. So if you have a Kindle reader, tablet, or free app and an Audible account (and free app), you can take advantage of this offer!

Simply click any of the links below, purchase (for FREE) the e-book and you will be directed to a confirmation screen. On that confirmation screen will be a link to Audible to purchase (once again, for FREE) the audiobook. If you're interested in multiple audiobooks, I'd suggest holding off on the actual checkout since you'll get a confirmation e-mail each time you check out.

A Word Of Caution:
Be sure that you are logged in to your Amazon-linked Audible account prior to clicking any links to purchase the Audible audiobooks. I made an account with a different e-mail than my Amazon account, and thus now have two separate accounts. I was logged into my other account when I clicked my first Audible link and now can't get the free download promotion applied to that one book. Luckily I don't think I'll be reading A Tale of Two Cities in the near future, so it's not a complete loss...

So without further adieu, here are the books available:

Complete List of 22 Titles

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
       Read by Anne Hathaway ; 3 hrs and 52 mins
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
       Read by Anne Flosnik ; 12 hrs and 19 mins
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
       Read by David Suchet ; 6 hrs and 8 mins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
       Read by James Langton ; 18 hrs and 49 mins
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
       Read by Davina Porter ; 13 hrs and 15 mins
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
       Read by Simon Vance ; 33 hrs and 53 mins
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
       Read by Jon Smith ; 13 hrs and 15 mins
The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
       Read by Patrick Tull ; 4 hrs and 6 mins
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
       Read by John Lee ; 23 hrs and 38 mins
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
       Read by Shelly Frasier ; 6 hrs and 34 mins
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
       Read by John Lee ; 8 hrs and 35 mins
White Fang by Jack London
       Read by Bob Thomley ; 8 hrs and 8 mins
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
       Read by Frank Muller ; 21 hrs and 20 mins
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
       Read by Nathaniel Parker ; 5 hrs and 21 mins
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
       Read by Simon Vance ; 8 hrs and 21 mins
Dracula by Bram Stoker
       Read by a Full Cast including Alan Cumming & Tim Curry ; 15 hrs and 28 mins
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
       Read by David Hyde Pierce ; 9 hrs and 52 mins
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
       Read by John Castle ; 31 hrs and 6 mins
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
       Read by Elijah Wood ; 10 hrs and 12 mins
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
       Read by Scott Brick ; 3 hrs and 47 mins
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
       Read by Wanda McCaddon ; 12 hrs and 11 mins
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
       Read by Simon Prebble ; 8 hrs and 6 mins

Yeah, that's right. You can enjoy the voices of Anne Hathaway, Elijah Wood, and Tim Curry in your ear FOR FREE!!!

So if you're like me and love listening to your books (whether you're reading along or not) I hope you take advantage of this promotion for some free lit and audiobooks.

Disclaimer - I first read about this announcement a couple days ago from one of my favorite blogs, The eBook Reader, but figured I should also do my part in spreading the news. Go check him out for great eReader & tablet reviews, tips, tricks, and news. Or just go read his article covering this announcement. You'll be glad you did.

Disclaimer Part Deux - I have no clue when this promotion will end. It stands to reason that Amazon will want all the hype they can get, but do be sure to check the Bold Red Kindle Price before you purchase.

Obscure Reference? Since When?!

Sunday was my grandfather's 76th birthday (yay!) and in celebration we decided to take him out for lunch. I'd never been to Applebee's, and he was in the mood, so we decided to try it out.

(Note, this is not a rant against Applebee's. It just so happens to be the setting.)

Now, my grandpa is a retired minister, which means (at least) two things: he's extremely outgoing, and he's capable of being very loud. His hearing isn't what it used to be, so he generally enunciates everything very pointedly and projects his voice louder than what it might need to be. Since we were in a noisy restaurant with talking and music going, this trait came in especially handy: we had no trouble hearing or understanding him throughout the meal.

Our server was probably around my age (early twenties), maybe a little younger. I don't know if he was having a bad day or if his personality was generally stiff, but he didn't reciprocate much of the jolliness that my grandpa tried to include him in.

When ordering, my grandpa made a joke that he wanted a candle in his shrimp dish. The server chuckled confusedly and asked what he was talking about. "What do you mean a kindle?" All three of us said simultaneously, "CANDLE," which he still looked awfully confused about. Grandpa finally explained that it was his birthday and he was just joking. "Oh, well, I don't think we have any candles, but save some room for dessert." Oh well, indeed.

Later, after we'd started in on our entrees, he came over to check on us again. And again, Grandpa tried to engage him: "Say, is there any way to get your music in here to play Seventy-Six Trombones?"

Server looks extra confused this time. He glances around the room as he says, "Uh, I'm not sure-"

Grandpa cuts in to explain more of the joke. "It's my 76th birthday, you see, and I thought that song would be fitting," he says with a big grin and a chuckle.

"Actually, I've never heard of it. Is it some sort of classical-"

"IT'S FROM THE MUSIC MAN!" my mom and I practically yell. "You know, the musical?" my mom adds.

"Oh... Nope, I've never heard of that."

If I don't look it on the outside, I definitely feel disgusted on the inside. Grandpa, meanwhile, dismisses the server from our awkward conversation again. "I was just kidding about the music. Thanks for checking in."

Since when is The Music Man
an obscure reference?!?!

And so, to prevent such atrocities from happening in the future, I share with you the following videos. Mind that these are all from the original 1962 movie staring Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett and an adorable young Ron Howard. Of course, if any of these great songs interest you, be sure to check out the full movie!

Okay, not from the movie, but all I could find was the finale version
- and who want's to give away the ending?
Ya Got Trouble
Pick-A-Little / Goodnight Ladies
Madame Librarian

That's right, Shipoopi was originally from The Music Man
Thank you Seth MacFarlane

BBC's Underestimation (Clarified)

According to a number of my peers, the BBC has decreed that a majority of us are terribly under-read. Of a list of 100 books, they state that most people have not read more than 6 books found on this list. Here's our chance to prove them wrong!

~EDIT~

After doing a little research of my own...there's probably never been such a statement by the BBC. According to this site, this is a meme that has been going around Facebook and various other sites since early 2009. Recently it's made another run and moved on to book blogs (which is where I picked it up).

One commenter (and fellow skeptic) on that site shows his own research into the subject:

I started seeing the “BBC Top 100 Books” meme around Facebook over the last couple weeks, but the "BBC doesn't think you've read more than six of these" part didn't sit right with me.

There’s a BBC Big Read 100 List which was done in 2003. However, the list in the meme is quite different than the BBC Big Read list where some think it started. I thought there might be a list that was closer to the one in the meme. So, I did a little online sleuthing.

First I found this article that mentions a World Book Day survey in 2007 of "100 books Brits can’t live without." And then I found the complete list on The Guardian’s website -- Mystery solved -- it’s the same list as the one in the meme.

So, feel free to see how many of those hundred books you’ve read. As a reader, I always find it fun. However, know that the BBC isn’t judging you. The only thing you'll discover is if you’ve read the same books that a bunch of people in the UK couldn't live without.

So, sorry we thought the worst of you, BBC. But hey, at least you get a bit of free publicity out of this, right? And in return, we get a chance to fill our free-time and share our reading accomplishments.


Instructions:
•Copy this list.
•Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
•Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.
•Tag other book nerds.
•Highlight the ones that you own but haven't read. They are probably in your TBR stack/on your shelf at the back because someone said you should read them.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (required)
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (3 books)

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (7 books)
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The King James Bible

Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (3 books)
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (required)
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis (7 books)
Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding (required)

Atonement – Ian McEwan

Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck (required)
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker (required)
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Inferno – Dante
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt
Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad (required)
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

Watership Down – Richard Adams

A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Read - 15 (technically 28 counting those in series)
Started - 5
Own But Haven't Yet Read - 13+ (we own a large collection of classics, but I don't recall all the titles)

In short, I'm not fully impressed by this list. Sure, there are a lot of books I've not read, and many of those I have no interest in reading, meanwhile some of the ones I read were forced upon me in school. But the list includes repeats (Narnia & Lion Witch and Wardrobe) and counts series as one entry (HP, His Dark Materials, LotR).

So, how many of these have you read/attempted/bought?

Southhappy Convent

~ Northanger Abbey ~
by Jane Austen
Amazon ~ Powell's

Catherine Morland is a heroine. You know, one of those unfortunate girls who have to deal with awful families, are locked up in castles, or have to overcome deadly plots, but manage to power through it all and fall madly in love with an extraordinary boy? Only problem is her family is lovingly ordinary. Oh, and she lives nowhere near a castle. And she doesn't seem to have anyone plotting against her. And none of the boys around town seem to be anything extraordinary.

And, what's more, Catherine is lacking the heroine's mind and skill. She's never attended to animals or plants, music evades her interest, lessons come at a normal speed, drawing is merely doodling, and she has never once known something inherently.

But all that could should will change when family friends Mr. and Mrs. Allen invite Catherine along on a trip to Bath. Surely this is the adventure she's been waiting for. These two will soon prove to be wicked, and she'll be locked up and finding her handsome hero in no time!

...Or they could be two very agreeable people who bear the girl no ill will and have only her best interests in mind.

Drat. Well, if her companions are set on being agreeable, she'll just have to find a dreadful situation to overcome. Surely there should be plenty of those in Bath! Shouldn't there?


I'm took part in a read-along group hosted at Reading with Tequila. For four weeks we read 'together' and blogged about what we thought. I know I'm over a week late in posting, so I think I'll just review the full book instead of only focusing on the end chapters.

Northanger Abbey Chapters 10-23 #NARead

I'm taking part in a read-along group hosted at Reading with Tequila. For four weeks we'll be taking a few chapters each week and blogging/chatting about them. This has been the third week and we've gotten about 3/4 through the novel (about 150 pages). Due to the previously mentioned computer issues I suffered from last week, I will be combining weeks 2 and 3.

~ Northanger Abbey ~

by Jane Austen
Chapters 10 - 23

When we last left off, Catherine Morland, our heroine, was struggling between the advances of John Thorpe and the desire to better know Henry Tilney. Not that she would ever say so herself, for she is much too polite, and would never dream of openly refusing one for the other.

In this installment, the intrigue only intensifies. Catherine tries to make a good impression with the Tilneys (Henry, his sister Eleanor, and his father General Tilney) but John Thorpe will not be ignored. He sabotages one meeting by telling Catherine he'd seen the Tilneys on their way elsewhere, then nearly sabotages another by telling the Tilneys that Catherine has other plans!

Luckily, our heroine is not so easily detained. In an act most unbefitting of a lady, she flees her present company (Isabella and John Thorpe, and her brother James) and bursts into the Tilney's home to inform them of the misinformation. She is rewarded not only with a pleasant walk and conversation, but with an invitation to the Tilney's estate, Northanger Abbey!

Before she departs, however, there is even more intrigue among her friends. Her brother proposes to Isabella, and both parties happily consent to the marriage. Isabella, however, seems to have different ideas on how an engaged woman is to act, for she repeatedly seeks out and dances with Henry's (recently arrived) brother, Captain Tilney. Oh, and apparently John has informed the Morlands that Catherine has agreed to marry him...

But surely those issues can wait until she returns from Northanger Abbey. That is...if she returns...for with mysterious chests and wardrobes in her room, unexplored hallways of the Abbey, and a malevolent General Tilney (who quite possibly killed or imprisoned his wife) to deal with, who knows if our heroine will make it out alive!

I'm loving the novel now, it was really hard to put it down to write this (albeit late) update. It took forever to get to Northanger Abbey—it wasn't even mentioned until chapter 17 (volume 2, chapter 2)—but so far I'm very pleased with it.

Henry Tilney is as charming as ever. There are a couple times where he's edging on pompous, but his sister reins him in quickly enough. I love his humor, and the fact that he's not afraid to say he loves novels. In fact, his gothic story with which he teases Catherine was possibly the most charming part of the novel.

The siblings, Isabella and John, are characters you love to hate. Both are obsessed with money, a fact which each lets slip at different times (Catherine, of course, is oblivious). John lies to get what he wants, whether it be to Catherine or to others. Isabella uses flattery and guilt to manipulate poor Catherine, and, no doubt, James. She's engaged to marry (in 2 years?!) James, yet she still seeks Captain Tilney's attentions.

Catherine finally grew a bit of a backbone (when she stood up to her friends and ran to the Tilneys), though she's still not very bright. There are multiple instances where she attempts to be subtle and ladylike, but is about as unsubtle as a brick. Then there's the fact that she doesn't realize that John's flirting with her or proposing to marry her, until Isabella mentions it. Luckily, Catherine has never been sold as all that clever, so it's not frustrating or contradictory to her character at all.

She is, however, fiercely loyal and innocent, never thinking badly of her friends. Even after John's lies, she doesn't condemn him. Granted, she's not all that happy with him, and she doesn't enjoy being alone with him, but she doesn't badmouth him to others or slap him, which is more than I could say for myself. She also thinks the best of Isabella, even when it's obvious that she's encouraging Captain Tilney as much as he's pursuing her.

I also love her imagination—even when she gets a little carried away by it. Northanger Abbey sounds like an amazing place to explore, but Catherine is no Belle and so she doesn't go (or hasn't yet gone) exploring on her own. And her thoughts about General Tilney being a crazed killer/kidnapper makes me roll my eyes, but chuckle at the same time. I can't wait until the confrontation!


Next up, chapter 24 to the end!

Northanger Abbey Chapters 1-9 #NARead

I'm taking part in a read-along group hosted at Reading with Tequila. For the next few weeks we'll be taking a few chapters each week and blogging/chatting about them. This first week was just the first 9 chapters (about 50 pages), so there's still time to sign up and join us, if you're interested.

~ Northanger Abbey ~

by Jane Austen
Chapters 1 - 9

Catherine Morland is a heroine. You know, one of those unfortunate girls who have to deal with awful families, are locked up in castles, or have to overcome deadly plots, but manage to power through it all and fall madly in love with an extraordinary boy? Only problem is her family is lovingly ordinary. Oh, and she lives nowhere near a castle. And she doesn't seem to have anyone plotting against her. And none of the boys around town seem to be anything extraordinary.

And, what's more, Catherine is lacking the heroine's mind and skill. She's never attended to animals or plants, music evades her interest, lessons come at a normal speed, drawing is merely doodling, and she has never once known something inherently.

But all that could should will change when family friends Mr. and Mrs. Allen invite Catherine along on a trip to Bath. Surely this is the adventure she's been waiting for. These two will soon prove to be wicked, and she'll be locked up and finding her handsome hero in no time!

Or they could be two very agreeable people who bear the girl no ill will and have in mind her best interests.

Drat. Well, if her companions are set on being agreeable, she'll just have to find a dreadful situation to overcome. Surely there should be plenty of those in Bath! Shouldn't there?

Here's the storyline so far:

Catherine and Mrs. Allen know no one in Bath, and are thus extremely uncomfortable at the social balls they attend. After a few of these unfortunate experiences, Catherine is introduced to a handsome, humorous, good-natured young man named Mr. Tilney. After a delightful conversation and a parting of ways, she is eager to meet him again.

However, at the next ball-type-thing he is nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Allen despairs that they are once again friendless in this city. Luckily an old acquaintance, Mrs. Thorpe, surfaces and (re)introduces herself and her daughters. The eldest, Isabella, realizes that Catherine is the sister of her brother's best friend, and the two are soon inseparable. They share a love for the Gothic (especially Udolpho), and, of course, for twittering on about prospective boys, especially the elusive (and that much more appealing) Mr. Tilney.

When both their brothers (James Morland and John Thorpe) make a surprise visit, the duo quickly becomes a quartet, each paired off with the other's sibling. Catherine is pleased to finally have someone to fill the role Mr. Tilney had vacated (both as an interest and a dance partner), until Mr. Tilney makes his return! Now she's stuck running around with John, who is becoming less and less agreeable, when she would most like to become more closely acquainted with the mysterious and charming Mr. Tilney.

What is a heroine to do!?*

I'm finding the whole novel rather enjoyable so far. Heh, I've even started adopting the language style—I usually find it hard not to. Though it's much more slowly paced than the books I've just come off of, I can't help but enjoy Austen's sophisticated snarky humor.

She expertly describes the two brothers, John and James, as complete asses, without actually coming right out and saying it. And trust me, they are asses. The way they talk about women to women is just...bitch-slap worthy: "'[John] is as good-natured a fellow as ever lived; a little of a rattle; but that will recommend him to your sex I believe...'" Ugh! Makes me want to toss the book across the room on the off-chance that he might feel it.

I think what makes reading this the most enjoyable is drawing parallels to other literature. Northanger Abbey is a satire or parody of the Gothic novel, after all. I haven't read The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is what they most constantly refer to, but there are a few more modern books I'm finding particularly fitting. Twilight happens to be one of them.

I can see my follower list dwindling now... But just think about it for a second. A heroine (Bella) is thrust into an uncomfortable environment (boring old Forks/a supernatural war), and manages (dramatically) to cope the best she can. Suddenly, this mysterious boy (Edward) appears and she knows there's something different about him, something dangerous. Still, despite the danger, she pursues him. He reveals his secret (vampire), it is revealed that she possesses a unique skill (mental blockage), and they fall irrevocably in love with each other. Together they must defeat the villains (James, Victoria, the Volturi) who seek their destruction.

According to Wikipedia:

Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.

The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.

So, see where I'm coming from? It's actually almost too easy to compare Northanger Abbey with Nightlight, the Harvard Lampoon parody of Twilight. At least, so far. We'll see how much further the comparison goes. In the meantime, I'm finding it pretty hilarious drawing comparisons between Bella and Catherine.

Next up, chapters 10-15!


* This recap was originally as long as the entire post is now. But I figured most people interested in this post were or would soon be reading the book themselves, so I annotated it immensely.

Vampires vs Werewolves vs...Little Women?

Yes, the age-old battle of the monster titans has found common ground once more. You thought Twilight was a big deal? Try an all-or-nothing brawl as they both sink their equally destructive teeth into the same American Classic!

Now, unless you've been hiding under a rock, or haven't been to a bookstore in the last, oh, 6 months, you should have noticed the surge of, what I call, Monster Adaptations. What happens in most cases is, rather than paraphrasing the story, the co-writing author takes the original text, cuts out pieces and adds in that extra flair of...well, monsters. What started out as a novelty idea in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has resulted in a prequel and even more adaptations, such as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and even Jane Slayer!

What some see as a degradation of classic literature, others see as a new way to get kids interested in literature. Remember how it used to be adapting classic works into comic books? But, be you for or against it this trend is picking up speed.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the bookstore...here come more literary monster mashups! You can drive a stake into its heart, shoot it full of silver bullets and bury it under six feet of dirt, but this publishing trend Just. Won’t. Die. Now it’s Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s classic tale, that’s getting monsterized. And not just once, but twice. Available now, Little Women and Werewolves by Porter Grand and Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina take the well-known tale of Jo, Beth, Meg and Amy and add in a healthy serving of the unknown. Last week, Grand and Messina held a discussion with Alcott scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winner John Matteson about the book, the supernatural and mash-ups in general.

Both authors said they were impressed with how much the original text stood up to their fiddling. “When writing it, the biggest thing was realizing how strong the book was on its own,” said Messina. “I thought that adding vampires to it was going to change everything, but I was amazed at how little it actually changed.”

Grand spoke at length about Alcott’s own supernatural and blood-and-guts proclivities. Writing under the nom de plume A.M. Barnard, the otherwise demure author published a number of adventurous and murder-filled novels and stories, although these weren’t discovered until years after her death. “My goal when I was writing Little Women and Werewolves was to stay true to Alcott,” Grand said. “I really wanted to write it the way I think she would have written it if she had decided to insert werewolves into it.” While she admits that some rabid fans may take umbrage at their work (Matteson recounted a story of his own in which a certain Little Crazywoman sent him an 11-page letter calling him a heretic and threatening to burn him at the stake), Grand thinks Alcott herself would be “flattered, amused and delighted” at these tweakings of her most famous tome.

Messina admitted that she knows the mash-up craze won’t last forever, but she’s happy to get while the getting’s good. “It’s going to run its course,” she said. “I thought it was going to eventually tap out with Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, but I Googled it and it was already a movie!”

~ Keith Staskiewicz of EW

Adaptations? Mash-ups? Degradations? What do you think? Below are the summaries of this latest target and its two adaptations. Read through and give your opinion.

Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
Amazon
  ~ Powell's

Alcott's original work explores the overcoming of character flaws. Many of the chapter titles in this first part are allusions to the allegorical concepts and places in Pilgrim's Progress. When young, the girls played Pilgrim's Progress by taking an imaginary journey through their home. As young women, they agree to continue the figurative journey, using the "guidebooks" — copies of the New Testament, described as "that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived"; they receive on Christmas morning. Each of the March girls must struggle to overcome a character flaw: Meg, vanity; Jo, a hot temper; Beth, shyness; and Amy, selfishness.

In the course of the novel, the girls become friends with their next-door neighbor, the teenage boy Laurie. The book depicts the light hearted, often humorous activities of the sisters and their friend, such as creating a newspaper and picnicking, and the various "scrapes" that Jo and Laurie get into. Jo consistently struggles with the boundaries 19th century society placed on females, including not being able to fight in a war, not being able to attend college, and being pressured by her Aunt March to find a suitable husband to take care of her.

~ Wikipedia

Little Vampire Women
Louisa May Alcott and Lynn Messina
Amazon
  ~ Powell's

"Christmas wont be Christmas without any corpses."

The dear, sweet March sisters are back, and Marmee has told them to be good little women. Good little vampire women, that is. That's right: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy have grown up since you last read their tale, and now they have (much) longer lives and (much) more ravenous appetites.

Marmee has taught them well, and so they live by an unprecedented moral code of abstinence . . . from human blood. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy must learn to get along with one another, help make society a better place, and avoid the vampire hunters who pose a constant threat to their existence. Plus, Laurie is dying to become a part of the March family, at any cost. Some things never change.

This horrifying—and hilarious—retelling of a timeless American classic will leave readers craving the bloodthirsty drama on each and every page.

~ Amazon

Little Women and Werewolves
Louisa May Alcott and Porter Grand
Amazon ~ Powell's

A literary landmark—the original, suppressed draft of the classic novel!

Little Women is a timeless classic. But Louisa May Alcott’s first draft—before her editor sunk his teeth into it—was even better. Now the original text has at last been exhumed. In this uncensored version, the March girls learn some biting lessons, transforming from wild girls into little women—just as their friends and neighbors transform into vicious, bloodthirsty werewolves!

Here are tomboy Jo, quiet Beth, ladylike Amy, and good-hearted Meg, plus lovable neighbor Laurie Laurence, now doomed to prowl the night on all fours, maiming and devouring the locals. As the Civil War rages, the girls learn the value of being kind, the merits of patience and grace, and the benefits of knowing a werewolf who can disembowel your teacher.

By turns heartwarming and blood-curdling, this rejuvenated classic will be cherished and treasured by those who love a lesson in virtue almost as much as they enjoy a good old-fashioned dismemberment.

Includes the original letter from Alcott’s editor, telling her not to even think about it!

~ Amazon

So? Gonna bite? Which would you rather read? Vampires? Werewolves? Or are you more of a traditionalist?

And what about the trend in general? Are you ready to see it stop? Or are you ready for more?