Cavalcade of Awesome

To completely misquote Ron Burgundy, “I love books. Books-y, books, books. Here it goes down, down into my belly.” Okay, the last half of that mis-quote didn’t make any sense, but you get the point, I love to read. You can check the ever changing I Just Read and I Am Reading book sections on my blog’s sidebar (over there —>)to see what I’m currently enjoying and what I just finished enjoying. I thought about including what books I have “on deck” ready to be read in that sidebar, but really, it’s a crap shoot what gets picked up to be read next.  There’s no guarantee what I put there will, in fact, come next.

Anywho, sometimes I get on reading tangents where I want to knock out a few books that “the man” considers “classics”.  Stuff I never got to read while in school, or something I did read in school that I remember liking, but don’t remember a thing about it.  These are usually fun tangents and it’s allowed me to discover books like The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, which I never read in school, but is FANTASTIC (why the hell didn’t I read that in school?).  However, there are some classics that I should read, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to read.  Books by authors like Bronte, Joyce and Austen, while considered classics by “people in the know”, are considered flowery, boring and gay by “me”.  If I fall asleep reading the synopsis on the back of the book, then there is little hope the ENTIRE book is going to keep my interest.  So there was a whole section of classic literature that I avoided and I was fine with that.  Until savant/genius/author Seth Graham-Smith decided he too thought classic literature needed a little help in being “less literary” and “more AWESOME”.  Thusly was Pride & Prejudice & Zombies birthed upon our virgin world.

Graham-Smith infuses a subplot involving a battle with the undead into the literary classic thereby making it relevant to guys everywhere.  I mean, what good is a literary classic if NO ONE wants to read it?  Seriously.  Besides, what is more romantic than fighting off an army of the undead?  It’s okay if you can’t come up with an answer to that question, there isn’t an answer other than ‘NOTHING’.

So, I thought, in what other books would this work?  The possibilities are endless.  So I sat down at my desk at work….um, I mean the table at home, after I got off work….and came up with a few more twists on some boring classic literature books that would get me to read them.  Come enjoy the awesome-ness with me.

Original Synopsis – Follows the lives of the four March sisters as they live, love and learn their way through life. It’s an allegorical novel that champions the strength of women during a time in America when women weren’t considered strong.

New More AWESOME Synopsis – The four March sisters, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy, are always fighting. One day, a fight promoter, James Lawrence, happens upon one of their more viscous fights and gets an idea. Guys everywhere would pay to see these ladies just go at it in an all out battle royal. Mr Lawrence talks to the girls’ father and, having recently lost a good amount of the family’s money, he agrees to let Mr Lawrence train the girls for a traveling “girl fight” festival. The promoter recruits a few other girls from the nearby area and trains them in boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling. The girls then tour the country side with Mr Lawrence, fighting in a 10 woman battle royal 6 nights a week. The story follows the girls across the country as they live in the festival caravan and fight, love and learn in various small towns across 19th century America. This new version also shows the strength of women…in revealing clothing…in non-sanctioned bloody cage matches. Movie rights are pending.

Original Synopsis – Guy goes to visit his sick friend.  Sick friend’s sister gets sick also.  She dies.  Friend buries sister alive. Sounds cooler than it really is because there’s a lot of singing and reading of books and looking at paintings in the middle that drag the story on forever, despite the fact that it is a SHORT story.
New More AWESOME Synopsis – It’s the future. Usher Raymond has become ruler of the world. He has recorded 55 separate and distinct sequels to his song, “My Confession”. He runs the world with an iron, Michael Jackson-like gloved hand and lives, secluded, in a fortress/mansion far removed from normal, non-celebrity people, who he hates.  A resistance of normal people are tired of listening to his horrible, horrible albums (which are the only ones that are legal to buy) so they rise up, Braveheart-style, and storm Usher’s mansion/fortress.  The battle lasts for months until finally Usher is defeated and his mansion/fortress crumbles to the ground.  Usher’s body is buried in the rubble and people are free to listen to good music again.

Original Synopsis – Capt Ahab, Queequeg, Ishmael and the crew of the Peeqod (WTF is up with these names, Melville?) chase down the mighty white whale, Moby Dick. FYI, the book is almost 700pgs long, so there’s lots of scenes with a bunch of dirty, lonely guys aboard a whaling boat for months on end. Yeah, I know.
New More AWESOME Synopsis – Capt Ahab and Moby have an epic, ball crushing battle at the beginning of the novel. I mean, EPIC. Ahab loses his leg, gets scars all over his body, maybe loses an eye. Moby is also completely jacked up, losing an eye, maybe chunks of tail are missing, blood EVERYWHERE. Both barely escape to fight another day. Ahab goes on to heal, then recruit Ishmael and Queequeg on his boat like normal and search for Moby. Moby, however,  limps into the lost civilization of Atlantis. Because they are a futuristic society, Atlanteans have sympathy for animals. They rebuild Moby into a bigger, badder whale. No more are humans going to attack poor Moby without a fight. Moby gets HUGE bionic implants in his eye that allow him to shoot enormous friggin’ lasers. He also gets implants in his tail that allow him to swim 10x faster than he ever could before. Moby is now the perfect, cybernetic killing machine. Think Terminator, but bigger and in the water (Atlantean cybernetics are waterproof, obviously). This all leads up to Moby and Ahab’s second battle royale at the end of the book where Ahab and the boat, Peeqod, are blown into a fine, grainy powder by Moby’s bionic laser eye.  Moby Dick, indeed.

Original Synopsis – A first-person narrative of the title character, Jane Eyre, a small, plain-faced, intelligent and honest English orphan. The novel’s story goes through five distinct stages…zzzzzzzzzzzz…Huh?! What?! Sorry, I fell asleep telling you about this book. Let’s kick it up a notch…
New More AWESOME Synopsis – As a child, Jane Eyre lived with her Uncle’s family. While living with them Jane is routinely abused by her aunt and uncle. One day her Uncle dies under mysterious circumstances. Thinking Jane’s pent up anger about being abused caused the uncle’s death, her aunt locks her up. A mysterious man shows up claiming to be an apothecary and says the aunt should send Jane off to a “boarding school” to remove her violent tendencies. So the aunt sends her away to the Lowood School on recommendation by the mysterious man. Unbeknownst to Jane’s aunt, the Lowood School isn’t a boarding school, but a training facility for high-grade government assassins. Jane is trained in demolitions, electronic surveillance, advanced weaponry and hand to hand combat. She becomes one of the Lowood School’s top assassins as she kills her way through global dictators and evil military leaders. Eventually, though, Jane gets an assignment that goes against her strict moral code and must decide if she’s going to go with her instincts, or follow orders.

So, that was the first set of books I came up with. I have several more I thought of, but I think I’ll save those for another time. Hope you enjoyed these and took them in the same humor that I used to create them.

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This entry was posted on June 3, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under books, Classic literature, humor with tags books, classic literature, humor, Photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.