Fantabulous Friday

I made it through exam week! YES!

Now I can breathe.  And focus on important things.  Like my blog. 

It's Friday, and that means it's

FANTABULOUS FRIDAY!

If you're not into my topic for today, you can blame Ray J over at Point Me to the Sky Above.....I Can't Get There On My Own.  Yesterday she blogged about a few books, one of them being Abraham Lincoln,  Vampire Hunter. 

People have been reviewing this book quite a bit lately, and my curiosity finally got the best of me (thanks to Ray J's excellent review).

I went to the library, checked out the book, and within the first 25 pages I was captivated.  Once I realized the author, Seth Grahame-Smith, also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I had to put that on my reading list as well.

I googled to see if there were other similar novels to these two, and apparently I've been living under a rock because there's a bunch of them!  This is a newish genre, called "mashup".  It basically started with Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies being picked up by an independent publisher, which prompted other publishers to begin seeking more of this combination classic-modern pop culture.  Writers take a literary classic and rewrite it with genres from today's popular genres, such as vamires and zombies. 

Since 2009 there have already been eight more of these mashups done by various other authors that have been successful (many more were hurriedly published in an attempt to capitalize on the sudden interest, but most of those were poorly written and didn't sell).  I can only vouch for Vampire Hunter so far, but I will definitely be reading all of these sooner or later.

Here are a few of the best-sellers of this new genre (according to several websites):

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith

Jane Slayre by Charlotte Bronte & Sherri Browning Erwin

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen & Ben H. Winters

Little Vampire Women by Louisa May Alcott & Lynn Messina

If any of y'all have already read any of these, let me know what you thought!  If you decide to go read any of them now, please let me know what you think when you're done!