{"id":543,"date":"2017-07-12T16:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T22:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=543"},"modified":"2017-09-10T16:41:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T22:41:50","slug":"book-sense-and-sensibility-and-sea-monsters-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/12\/book-sense-and-sensibility-and-sea-monsters-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1441775899l\/6425725.jpg\" alt=\"Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters\" width=\"312\" height=\"475\" \/>Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2009<br \/>\nAuthor: Ben H. Winters and Jane Austen<br \/>\nLength: 340 pages<\/p>\n<p>After struggling my way through <em>Pride and Prejudice and Zombies<\/em>, I thought perhaps the next entry in the \u201cQuirk Classics\u201d line of books would be better. After all, it had a new co-author (alongside Jane Austen) and replaced the almost clich\u00e9 zombie trope with the lesser-seen sea monster framing. Unfortunately, I once again found myself struggling through the archaic language of Austen\u2019s time. Not only that, but I felt there was far too much talking and way too much nonsense, and that wasn\u2019t even about the sea monsters. I\u2019m starting to suspect that I just plain don\u2019t like Jane Austen\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n<p>Half of the book is practically filled with young women swooning over eligible bachelors, learning that these bachelors are engaged or married, and then becoming depressed because of this revelation. If they spent less time gossiping and more time communicating, perhaps they wouldn\u2019t have these problems. Of course, I realize that this was probably an artifact of the era in which the original <em>Sense and Sensibility<\/em> was written, but it all seems pretty \u201csenseless\u201d if you ask me. Speaking of senseless, this book certainly delivers on a lot of it, when it comes to the violence of the sea monsters.<\/p>\n<p>As was the case with <em>Pride and Prejudice and Zombies<\/em>, I feel Austen\u2019s prose holds back the potential for a much more interesting story. Practically steampunk in its underwater cities and rudimentary diving systems, if this book was an original story, I think it would have been much more interesting to read instead of having to slog through another Jane Austen novel. Of course, most people probably wouldn\u2019t have picked up such a novel, because they wouldn\u2019t know what it\u2019s about. Modifying a Jane Austen story merely gets readers in the door, but it seems like a lazy solution to gain sales instead of a way to create an engaging narrative.<\/p>\n<p>Another attempt at fusing Jane Austen with unnecessary violence, I give <em>Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters<\/em>\u00a03.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h1><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><strong>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><strong>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters Year: 2009 Author: Ben H. Winters and Jane Austen Length: 340 pages After struggling my way through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I thought perhaps the next entry in the \u201cQuirk Classics\u201d line of books would be better. After all, it had a new co-author (alongside Jane Austen) and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,54],"tags":[372,693,55,692,691,689,696,8,695,694],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-book","tag-372","tag-ben-h-winters","tag-book","tag-jane-austen","tag-pride-and-prejudice","tag-pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies","tag-quirk-classics","tag-review","tag-sense-and-sensibility","tag-sense-and-sensibility-and-sea-monsters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}