Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies April 22, 2009

To begin, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is wonderfully clever.  Seth Grahame-Smith takes an idea that would be a great 5-minute SNL skit and manages to have it carry a 300+ page book.  He weaves the Zombies into the existing work organically, placing the action where it heightens rather than impedes the plot.  Grahame-Smith works in a complete world, the zombies don’t just appear every dozen pages and wreak havoc, they are very much on the characters’ minds.  In fact, I found that I had no problems with the additions to Austen’s text in the form of Zombies, Ninjas, and Martial Arts; they work, and that is a compliment to Grahame-Smith’s very inventive mind.  Beyond simply functioning, the Zombie/Ninja stuff is hysterical.

“To walk three miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! With the unmentionable menace dragging poor souls off the road and to their doom day and night? What could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum….I am afraid, Mr. Darcy,” observed Miss Bingley in a half whisper, “that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes.”

“Not at all,” he replied; “they were brightened by the exercise.”

This was the first passage that made me actually laugh out loud, and considering that instead of a walk through the countryside Elizabeth’s exercise was a desperate fight against three Zombies, it actually improves on the original.  Grahame-Smith manages to give many of the iconic moments in Pride and Prejudice his own twist, and I never disliked those changes.

If all Seth Grahame-Smith had done to Pride and Prejudice was add Zombies, even preserving the passages he edited to better fit the undead, this would be an unequivocally enthusiastic review.  However, he falls down in two major areas that give me pause in recommending it, especially to other Austen fans.  First, he could have used a better editor, in terms of consistency, the abridgment, and the text making sense.  Second, he adds passages that push things to the point of caricature, demolishing depth and historical accuracy along the way.  I’m saving most of my full blown ire on this subject for a separate post, for people who think they can handle me in full on I-once-aspired-to-be-the-world’s-foremost-authority-on-Jane-Austen mode.

Grahame-Smith really needs a better editor.  His spelling of Bennet, the surname of 7 main characters, fluctuates throughout the novel.  This something a word processor can fix; there’s simply no excuse for it.  He also, consistantly refers to the militia quartered at Meryton as the “shire Milita.”  In Austen’s text they are the “—-shire Militia”, a proper noun with the full name of the county ommitted.  By deleting the “—-” Grahame-Smith indicates that they are either the militia for the county, the archaic (even in the 19th century) term would be shire, or that he doesn’t understand what he’s doing by either improperly capatalizing a proper noun or ignoring the reasons for the “—-” altogether.  A better editor would have, hopefully, improved Grahame-Smith’s abysmal abridgment as well.  He cuts scenes so that, from my (Comprehensive Pride and Prejudice Awareness of 50.25) perspective, they cease to make sense.  Deleting lines for no reason other than to make scenes shorter, on at least a few occasions sacrificing Austen’s subtle humor for space to fit in his own.  Furthermore, there are actual logical errors in his alterations, places where he has characters talk about other characters pages before discovering their identities.  I’m not talking a “we haven’t been introduced” thing, this is a “whoah! I never would have guessed that these people are actually —” thing.  Suffice it to say that his abridgments bothered me, both as an Austenite and because some of them made no sense.  Simply put, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies gives Twilight a run for it’s money when it comes to bad editing. (grammatical errors intended)

Jane Austen write light satire; her characters have flaws that critique certain elements of Regency life, but her commentary isn’t blatant, at least not until Seth Grahame-Smith gets his hands on it.  I understand that Grahame-Smith’s work is satirizing Austen, I do, but I really dislike how he goes about it.  He pushes several of the characters, including Darcy to the point where they lose their depth and become caricature.  It’s painful for me to watch these characters that I know so well get regulated to two dimensions and it’s untrue to the spirit of the book.  I could maybe handle some of the satire if it wasn’t so entirely modern in character.  I’m weird and I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in lieu of a book I’m still reading: What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England, a history book dedicated to bettering the 21st century reader’s understanding of 19th century literature, and I’m not learning a whole lot of new information from it either.  I know my shit when it comes to Austen, so when people like Darcy spout things like

“Miss Bingley, the groans of a hundred unmentionables would be more pleasing to my ears then one more word from your mouth…”

it actually causes me pain. 1) Darcy is, according to Austen, polite to those select few he deems his peers, which definitely includes Miss Bingley. 2) At this time period, even given certain changes for an infestation of zombies, class is still important enough to prevent Darcy and Bingley from marrying the Bennet sister of their choice so it would be unthinkable for Darcy to be so rude to his friend, peer, and hostess.  The caricaturization and historical inaccuracy persist throughout the book and while they are nitpicky details, they contribute to ruin the otherwise enjoyable experience.

In the end, do I recommend Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?  To anyone from the Austen-hater to the casual Austen fan, yes.  It is a clever, funny, entertaining take on the classic novel.  However, if you really love Pride and Prejudice, if you’ve watched the BBC/A&E Miniseries multiple times, if you’ve read all of Austen’s other novels, then you might want to take a pass on this one, maybe take it out from the library.  I’m not saying that no Pride and Prejudice fan could enjoy Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I enjoyed it quite a bit, actually.  I’m just cautioning people before they invest time and money into something they might not enjoy.

What’s your Pride and Prejudice Awareness? April 20, 2009

For my review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I’ve had to cut up my review depending on how familiar the reader is with Pride and Prejudice (especially the Book and Miniseries) and Jane Austen in general, I call this my “Comprehensive Pride and Prejudice Awareness.”  A reader very familiar with Austen’s work will deal with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies differently than a reader who hasn’t and I want my review to address that fact.  This brings us back to the CPPA, which takes into account everything I can think of that might expose people to Pride and Prejudice or Jane Austen, with a bit more weight for Pride and Prejudice because the review is Pride and Prejudice specific.  My score’s pretty astronomical (I’ll tell you guys what it is when I post the review), but even I don’t hit every single point.

I was so amused by the whole idea of the CPPA that I thought I would share it with you guys before posting the review (tomorrow, hopefully). Enjoy! Let me know your score in the comments!

How much good can Baseball do? April 13, 2009

I promise, I will write about something other than Baseball the next time I blog.  This continues from the last post though, so bear with me (note that I really love Baseball, so until October throws me into the depths of despair it’ll show up).

When last we left our heroine (me) her baseball knitting was a plain sock that looked like this:

Immediately following that post the intrepid knitter headed to the last home opener at the Metrodome.  Upon reaching the stadium she knit on her sock, enjoyed the view from center field, watched the fastest man in baseball drop a two run homer 30 yards in front of her, and suffered through a devistating loss for the Minnesota Twins.  Upon reaching home her sock looked like this:

Clear progress, though not as much as the night before.  However, on Sunday I was in the lounge watching on TV whereas on Monday I was at the stadium.  When I’m at the game I find that I make less progress because I keep doing things like talking with other people, cheering, eating, the wave, and enjoying the view.  Still, I made clear progress and my sock is getting closer and closer to becoming the second of a pair.  So there, conclusive proof that baseball time is great knitting time.  I’d go into the other multitudinous virtues of Baseball (common topic for conversation with most American males, excitement, drama, general kick assness) but to my fellow knitters out there “three hours of minimally interrupted knitting time” really beats any other reason.

On the topic of my dearest, darling Minnesota Twins, well, I’m not sure what to think.  We’re down two catchers, both of whom are incredibly useful bats as well.  The Twins have struggled with run production for the last couple of seasons and it pains me to see pitchers like Nick Blackburn and Glen Perkins get the L when they only let in one run.  I’m of the opinion that better discipline at the plate would fix a lot of the Twins scoring problems, but you could easily make the case for more power or a stronger bullpen.  I can’t wait to see what happens as the team settles into the regular season, especially once Joe Mauer returns to his rightful spot behind Home Plate.  I would also like to note how delighted I am by Carlos Gomez’s improvement since last year. I love watching him play (he moves so beautifully) so I’m happy when he gets more time on the field.

Baseball Season is Knitting Season April 6, 2009

Baseball season has arrived at last.  The four solid weeks reading Keats hasn’t given me the descriptive poewrs to express how good it feels to have the sounds of a Mets/Reds or a Nationals/Marlin’s game floating out of my speakers (from the MLB iPod app, Game Day Audio FTW).  My family has always been big baseball fans, a situation that has only gotten worse as time has gone on.  It’s gotten so bad that we made a pilgrimage to the Baseball Hall of Fame over Thanksgiving (I lost my camera right after that and I therefore have none of the pictures I took that day or over the whole break)

I would blame the increase of baseball watching on my parents need to keep themselves entertained as my sisters and I grow up and move out, but that would only be a half-truth.  In reality, Mom and I realized that during a Baseball game we can knit, basically uninterrupted, for three hours.

You might think, how much of a difference could three hours of knitting really make, you guys knit all the time anyway.

I could argue with those thinkers for a thousand or more words, but I’ve got a picture that’ll do just fine.

This is my mindless knitting, a sock in S.R. Kertzer On Your Toes 4 Ply.  I’ve been working on this on and off since Christmas, I finished this sock over Interim break when I did almost nothing except for sit on the deck of the cruise ship, knit, and listen to all 4 Twilight audiobooks (Shannon Okey expressed worry over my burgeoning addiction, but I’m fine, really, I’m not addicted to the Sparkle!crack at all *twitch*).  Now during Frbruary and March I knit the toe and the first few increases on the instep (which I really should have taken pictures of when I updated Ravelry yesterday), and then yesterday the Baseball season started.

I did most of the instep and all of the heel turn while I watched the Braves beat up on the Phillies.  That is more progress than I’ve made, literally in months and it’s no mistake that it happened on the first day of Baseball season.  Check out the side view for a better idea of how much I knit.

There is such a perfect chemistry between Baseball and knitting.  If you aren’t watching every second, you might miss some awesome things (my favorite/what I always miss are double plays), but you can certainly follow the game while knitting.  I, obviously, find the expereience pretty entertaining and if the proliferation of Stitch n’ Pitch events throughout the country is any indication I’m not the only knitter that thinks that (the site appears to be down right now, so I think we may have crashed it).

Baseball is a very important part of my life, and I’m so very glad to have it back, it feels like I’ve just put on new glasses and I can really see again (I just got new glasses, remind me to show you guys).  While I’ve been writing this post I’ve listened to the Mets beat the Reds and the Nationals give up 6 runs to the Marlins, looks like they’re headed to their usual place, “First in War, First in Peace, last in the National League”.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the Twins home opener (the last in the Metrodome).  Go Twins!

Best. App. Ever. March 8, 2009

I bought/downloaded the Battlestar Galactica Cylon Detector App for my iPod Touch and felt immediate buyers remorse. Then I started playing with it and it is so much fun. I’ve tested literally every face in my iPod already. I’ll post about my findings later, once I’ve replaced my family’s faces with those of well known celebrities (gotta keep the secret identity intact ya know), but for now I have a truly great example of why this app rocks.

Twist of Something or Other January 8, 2009

I find it strange how things in my life interconnect.  I pick up a book randomly in a school library, which leads to an obsession, which leads me to learn to knit so I can make a costume replica from the movie of that book I picked up, which leads to another obsession, which leads to me discovering podcasts, which leads to Lime & Violet, which leads to me pitching a column for the brand new Daily Chum, which probably puts me over the top for my Marvel internship.

Now I’m sitting here, older, wiser (though not wise enough to replace the study skills I lost in the 8 months since I last was in school) and these two halves of my life continue to interact in strange ways. Take today for instance: I’m all jazzed because the article I wrote about Kniittiing (A knitting video game for the Wii, seriously) got picked up by CRAFT and Knitty.  Which I was pretty sure it would, because all the Chum girls were chatting about it (that’s often how you know a story will be big, GO CHUM TEAM!), which is why I’m using the last skills I’d ever think to transfer from Marvel to L&V to interview the design team for Kniittiing (I interviewed a couple of video game people while I was at Marvel).

I am of course accepting questions, you can ask them here in the comments, or you can email me, or you can ask me on Twitter, or on Plurk.  Ask away people!

Witness December 18, 2008

So I’m laying here trying to sleep and I’m listening to James McPherson’s “This Mighty Scourge,” which is about the American Civil War. I think “Man, I wonder what it was like to hear Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address” (which is weird, because the part I’m listening to is about Ulysses S. Grant, not Lincoln or Gettysburg).

I got to thinking about how amazing it would be to witness something like the Gettysburg Address, about how modern technology allows us to see things like Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech and about everything that we can’t see because it happened too long ago or that you can tell from the recording was just magical in person. The list I came up with seemed so good that I wanted to share it, no explanations, just the list.

Historic Events I Would Go See (if I could time travel)

1) Gettysburg Address
2) Dickens’ last public reading
3) The murder of Julius Caesar
4) The Beatles last concert
5) (in order of believability) The battle between Achilles and Hector/The Sack of Troy/Homer reciting The Illiad
6) Cy Young/Don Larsen/Sandy Koufax’s Perfect Game
7) Ella Fitzgerald in Concert, February 13, 1960 Berlin
8 ) The Moon Landing

I’m writing this on my iPod so please pardon any spelling errors, I’m gonna go fix this in the morning, but the spirit is with me now.
ETA: Alright, spelling and what not is fixed.

Weird Dream… August 11, 2008

So not a proper blog post, but no Microblogging service can contain the magnitudinal weirdness of this dream.

I was working at “Revision3” which is in quotes because I have seen video of Revision3 and the place in the dream was nothing like Revision3, but in the dream it was.  Bruce Banner, this other Guy, and I have a show on Revision3 (no clue what it was about, but it had to be awesome) and we have this Secretary and we never remember her birthday.  I get to work and the guys have rotated everything on the “Diggnation Set” (Diggnation isn’t filmed on a set) 90 degrees.  And I know Kevin and Alex are going to be pissed about this, but no one is going to be as pissed as Gary Vaynerchuck, who is going to Vayner-shank us (I can’t even think Vayner-shank without giggling maniacally, nor do I know exactly what a Vayner-shank implies, but in the dream it was freakin’ terrifying) anyway so I start yelling at the guys to come out and move all this stuff back or Gary is going to Vayner-shank us, when all of a sudden Gary pops up and I FREAK OUT.  I freak out by stapling my script excessively and running into out office, which seems pretty tame, but I tell you my dream self was scared for her dream life.  For the rest of the  dream Gary keeps popping up and I am sure he is going to Vayner-shank me (he never does, but I’m still scared the whole time).

When I get into the office the Secretary whose birthday we always forget shows up, I go back in time and relive the whole dream from her perspective (she really wants me to be Vayner-shanked) and then the dream pans over me and the guys sitting on the couch and on the end, but it’s a completely different couch, is Gary and I think this finally scares the dream guys because the next thing I know we’re all trying to switch the diggnation furniture, because now we have to replace the old furniture with identical new furniture (none of which has ever appeared on an episode of diggnation) and we’re moving the old Victorian fish tank when I look through and I see Bruce and his heart is racing and he’s wearing the exact orange hoodie he wore in the movie and he starts to Hulk out (Duh, I <3 Hulk, Hulk would be in my dream) and then Gary shows up and is totally gonna Vayner-shank me and then I’m back in the Secretary’s point of view and she is really glad that I’m going to be Vayner-shanked and then my Dad woke me up and I will never know what happens next, but I think there are some clear lessons to be had from this dream:

• Always remember your Secretary’s Birthday
• Never go into show business with someone whose physical state is entirely dependent on their emotions
• Don’t prank Diggnation

and,

• Gary Vaynercuck is terrifying.

Stop the internet now, I need to get off.

Notes before I go:

1. I totally think Gary is a great person and I don’t think he would actually Vayner-shank anyone (unless I’m only saying that because he would Vayner-shank me otherwise, but I’m not)
2. I know that most of you come here for knitting content, but I’m knitting a Clapotis and 3/4 of the knitters on the internet have knit one, so you don’t necessarily need to see mine, and I’m not making much progress anyway. However, I have some content for you:  This is my Loopy Ewe Gift Pack (won in their 2 year anniversary contest, Thank You Sheri!!!) with a really cute Red Tote (with a tag I just found reading “Sock Yarns don’t count as stash”), skein of All Things Heather in Lotus, and my very first skein of Woolmeise (Woolmeise!!!!!) I am so pleased and I really love the tote.
3. I think it is funny that the same night I dream of Hulk, Matt Fraction dreams of Dr. Doom.  I haven’t even started working at Marvel yet, but I have already been plugged into the Marvel subconscous that actually controls the world (I don’t write Hulk, nor am I in any position to ever write Hulk, but if I were to write Hulk, we would see him Hulk Out through an ornate fish tank).

Your Vote Matters! May 28, 2008

Today is all about getting you my loyal readers (please exist) to help me out with a decision that weighs on my mind. And knitting (it is What’s on Your Needles Wednesday).  But first, Haiku:

As you may or may not know Wendy is giving away an iPod to the person who writes the best summer themed Haiku.  She decided to do this right after I got out of Creative Writing (i.e. I still know how to write poetry).  The only problem is that I’ve written too many Haiku (we’re limited to one) and I need your help to choose my best Haiku.  There’s a poll at the end of this post and I’ll enter whichever haiku has the most votes on Thursday evening!

Haiku # 1

Humid hours hang

Over oppressed offices

To torture totally.

Haiku#2

Diet coke with lime

tastes better in summer heat

like tropical treat

Haiku # 3

sweat glistened fingers

can’t manage knitting needles

not to mention wool

Haiku #4

I will be a child

as long as I can still jump

splash! Into the pool.

Haiku #5

Sleeping in till noon

through seven hours of sunlight

only in summer.

In Knitting…

Since I do still knit (not often enough, but I’m working on that) I thought I’d have a little WOYNW action today.

These are my Hedera socks, enjoying the sunshine we’re having today (I was outside today, I pulled weeds and then knit for a while).  They are from Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock on Size 0 Knit Picks metal DPNs, and are technically a Mother’s Day gift (they’re late), but I am so close to the toe that I can smell it, so I’m doing ok.

I’ve got my spies on you! May 27, 2008

So picking up about my life (from yesterday) I was going to say what I thought would be the most ideal thing in the world, but the truth is that I really don’t know anymore.  I guess it slipped my mind, but my life is kind of unsettled like that right now.

I do feel pretty accomplished, though, because my Twitter bot for the Daily Chum has been a huge success, and the flickr group I also started for the chum is looking like it might take off.  So that’s all well and good, but it will be pretty sad when the bot has more followers than I do, which it’s looking like it will happen pretty soon.  Also! I’ve been twittering haikus I wrote for Wendy’s Haiku contest over the past couple of days and I want people to vote on them here tomorrow, so be sure that you come back then!

On to the business of the day, my first book of the summer!  The book was Spies: The Secret Agents Who Changed the Course of History by Ernest Volkman; I really enjoyed it.  It was kinda panned in both the professional and amateur reviews on Amazon, but I suppose I’m just burnt out and easy to please because it was really fun to read.  The book is made up of very short concise biographies of significant figures in 20th Century espionage and they’re grouped according to what kind of agent they were.  In my experience (and I have some, I tried to create a fantasy-medieval era intelligence ring for a story) it is really hard to get any concise details on anything espionage-related (for good reason I think) but I feel like this book is a good way to become a bit more familiar with the language and terminology.  I generally prefer biography to straight up history because it tends to be more linear and I care more about it because there is a story.  I think this book is good for people with a general interest but no previous knowledge, it’s a little like reading the wikipedia entries on all of these guys, but I have derived hours of entertainment from reading wikipedia entries so I’m ok with that.  Also, because I bought the book at half price books, I think it’s a good way to do a little reading and discover what else I would like to read about in this field, I know now that I should look for stuff more specifically about historical espionage (there’s stuff on American Civil and Revolutionary War espionage) and if I were more interested in anyone in the book, I would then be able to track down longer biographies of them.  As it is I wouldn’t go seeking anything, but if I run across a biography of H.A.R. Philby or someone else at the library or HPB I would probably pick it up.