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Monday, March 11, 2013

Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float- Sarah Schmelling

4/5


So I picked up the book Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float mainly because I love anything Hamlet and anything Ophelia.


What I got was WAY more than I expected. First off this book is hilarious. It goes through a number of the classics by making them all like facebook.

So each novel has clubs they join, news feed updates, games they play, apps they add, friend request and comments, and this is how the author tells their stories.

She also added some author input and some sarcastic snark that I really enjoyed. Basically this was seriously clever and made me literally laugh out loud during several moments.

So what, pray tell, is the reason this is getting four stars instead of five? I will tell you. I got bored with some of the “books.” I haven’t read them all so the ones I have not read and honestly have no idea what they were about and didn’t care, started to bore me. I basically read the ones I wanted to and skipped the rest. Now there are 9 chapters and she covers about six books in each section. So out of roughly 54 books/author works I only skipped about eight of them. So I feel pretty good reviewing this.

The novel starts out first person Shakespeare creating a group for those who have been deemed worthy of the title Classic Author. He puts forth rules and regulations for everyone who joins and writes between a mixture of his original prose and modern day English.



Note worthy items and passages to give you a funny example of how this book worked:

Hamlet:

The King poked The Queen

The Queen poked the King Back

Dante’s Inferno was written entirely in an online quiz


Every so often writers or character would play a game called Scrabulific (scrabble) and engage in smack talk.

Wuthering Heights:

Heathcliff now owns Cathy's house via Fathering a Frail and Wimpy Son Application.

Jane Eyre:

Jane added “Lowood School” to her Education Info

Rochester's bed is smokin' and not in a good way

Anna Karenina and several others like Lolita have ADMIN notes. Anna Karenina’s is all about how long the novel is and do we really want to read pages up pages of how Levin feels about Agriculture. While Lolita’s ADMIN notes are warnings about inappropriate subjects and content.

Other stories like Romeo and Juliet show inboxes of emails. In Romeo and Juliet it shows how Friar L’s first email to Romeo about how Juliet is faking her death didn’t send and how he hopes this second email makes it in time.

To Kill a Mocking Bird is told by Scout Finch in one of those annoying if you are tagged you must fill this out and tag other people kind of way. Five Random Things About Boo Radley. She starts making things up and other characters from the book scold her, it ends with actual facts about Boo Radley.



With Edgar Allan Poe the author basically just covers all his poems and stories in one crazy section.
Edgar Allan Poe just received a ROLF Catz: iz in ur wall (wit ur ded wife)



Dracula was pretty funny, one of the more humorous lines:

Renfield found Dracula’s new house and is now humping the door.



Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth: Yes and it must be hard to see with your head that far up your butt" to Mr Darcy


Little Women’s section was very brief and full of Louisa May Alcott complaining how tired she was of “all this moral pap.”

Over all I had a GREAT time reading this, laughed, was entertained and it was a fast easy read. I highly recommend this if you enjoy different takes on the classics (you know different takes that are not adding a vampire or a werewolf and calling it a novel.)


Enjoy.