I was at my local Barns and Noble today spending some hard-earned birthday giftcard money when I noticed PP and Z.
Now I have never really read PP. I started reading it and finished it, but I never really payed much attention cuz it was mostly a “chick book” to me; so suffice it to say I don’t remember virtually any of it. Adding zombies to the book really seems like a fun idea, and I have heard good reviews of it on this message board, but I wanna know if it would behoove me to read the original first.
Would I appreciate the “sequel” more if I read the original? Will I be lost; or is the rewrite enough that it doesn’t make a difference either way?
Yeah I gotta say…that thread didn’t help me too much.
It was people saying how good the book was (and one saying it was bad), but it didn’t really answer my question.
You will like the book better if you have read P&P…You will giggle uncontrollably if you have read it often enough to be able to recite the original word for word.
Otherwise, I suspect its rather bad. Zombies don’t do much for Austen prose if you don’t like Austen prose to start with. The comedy of manners that is zombie slaying in Regency England is funny, but I suspect much funnier if you found the original comedy of manners entertaining to start with.
I’m a fan of Austen’s writing to begin with, have read Pride and Prejudice several times, am about halfway through P&P&Z, and I love it. It’s tons of fun and I find myself laughing out loud every other page.
My dad, a big fan of zombie movies, cannot stand Austen’s writing and couldn’t get through more than a few pages of the book, despite thinking the premise sounded cool.
It’s the contrast between the fastidious Regency prose and the ghastly occurrences it describes that makes the book so funny. It wouldn’t work nearly as well if it were, say, A Farewell to Arms and Zombies.
What Dangerosa said. I’m a huge Austen fan and I thought P&P&Z was a hoot and a half. A friend of mine – who likes horror, but is bored by Austen – barely made it through 2 chapters before giving up.
I had to check Barnes & Noble’s online availability thing every day for two weeks to finally snag a copy at my local store. They sell out as fast as they get them in.
That’s odd. I went to the local Barnes and Noble’s store to look for a Mother’s Day card. (I really like their card selection but I usually go to Half Price Books for books.) I also found a book for my mom and then thought, “Hmmm, I want to go check out this PP&Z book, b/c I want to sample it and see if I should look for it.”
I’m standing in the middle of the store with the SO, gazing around checking the signs to figure out where to look and an employee stops and asks if I need help. I’d normally just say no, but it was late, so I said “yeah, I’m looking for a book…it’s called ‘Pride and Prejudice…and Zombies’.”
Him: “What?”
I repeated the title.
They had it, I got it. But he had to look it up on the computer.
It was odd saying “Pride and Prejudice…and Zombies” out loud.
Started reading it tonight. I’ve had some fun chuckles out of it and it turns out I remember more from the novel than I thought.
Comcially enough I found the book at a Barns and Noble…on a Jane Austin endcap.
It had the original P and P, Sense and Sensibility, and all her other book…and smack dab in the middle of it was PPZ…I laughed out loud when I saw that.
I remember more of the novel and the b&w movie with Olivier than I thought.
It’s funny in an odd dumb weird funny way. It’s like when in the South Park movie they did a song that reffed “Les Miz”. It’s like the Gilligan’s Island castaways making a silent movie. It’s Angel all puppets. It’s Buffy silent and then all in song.
I’m not a big Austen fan. I’m not her target audience by any means. But I DID know Pride and Prejudice very well, having studied it, so I got all the gags that require understanding of the original.
I think you really MUST read the original to get it.
So this whole zombie thing – does it come to a point eventually? I’ve just started reading it, and up to now, it seems all a bit slapdash and shoehorned in, some variation of ‘oh and there were zombies, too’ inserted at various places into the text, without terribly much consequence…
I was the one in the last thread that didn’t like it, didn’t make it through more than about 30 pages, and I love the original book and I worship zombie movies. Maybe I will give it one more try, especially now that the weather is warm, and might be good reading at the pool.