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We can’t set foot out of the house without exposure to advertising, even if we don’t watch TV, use the Internet, or read fashion magazines. Advertising is everywhere, from billboards and posters to clothing to shop windows. It is an inconvenient truth that we are indeed affected by advertising and commercialism, even if we don’t believe it. This book is as much a psychology book as a sociology book. Using examples, statistics, interviews, and her own life experience, Kilbourne covers the connections between advertising and addiction. Ads talk directly to addicts in an attempt to make the addiction look like normal and accepted behavior. She addresses how we reach for material things in a futile attempt to find comfort. In an over-consumerist society that is destroying the planet, advertising encourages us to consume more and more and to replace interconnectedness, relations, and communication with material things. A car doesn’t argue with you, so it’s easier to buy a car than to communicate with people. Can’t Buy My Love is a very important book for all Americans to read, so that they will be able to see advertising with a critical and conscious eye and not be fooled. It will also enable Americans to protect their children from the conditioning that advertisers, including those of the tobacco and alcohol industries, consciously attempt.

Are you tired of fatphobic misogynists harassing you? Tired of being told to go on a diet? Were you continually bullied and socially ostracized throughout your childhood because of your appearance? Still traumatized by this childhood bullying? The eye-opening book Fat! So? will empower you to feel better about your size and shape and help you realize that fatphobia is a form of bigotry, like homophobia, misogyny, and racism. In this toxic society, we are constantly barraged with the message that being fat is bad and shameful, and that we should strive to be as thin as possible. The media and the people we see each day firmly believe this and constantly remind us. We are barraged with an assumption that fat is unhealthy, yet we have no evidence supporting this assumption. Most people foolishly refuse to accept the fact that we come in different sizes and shapes. It’s like refusing to accept that some of us are left-handed and that we have different skin colors. Fat! So?, compiled from the zine of the same title, is an amusing, entertaining, irreverent, and educational look at bigotry toward fat people and how we can transcend it. It includes illustrations and projects such as a Goddess of Willendorf paper doll. Fat prejudice and ridicule is directed more at women than men, but the book is also relevant to men. In fact, everyone in America should read it, not just fat people. It will change the way we all see size and shape.

Flora Segunda is a hilarious, moving, whimsical, refreshing, and original young adult fantasy novel set in an alternate reality version of California, a country called Califa. Flora is so-named because the first Flora, her oldest sister, died well before she was born. Flora Segunda grows up with a sense of inferiority toward the original, golden-haired Flora. At the age of fourteen, Flora does all the domestic chores in her dysfunctional family because her father is a reclusive alcoholic and her mother is a workaholic who rarely comes home and who has banished the butler, a supernatural being meant to keep the huge mansion, Crackpot Hall, in order. Flora accidently ends up in a strange part of the house… and finally meets the butler, whom she tries to save so she doesn’t have to keep doing all the housework. Can Flora find courage and be herself at last, or will her practice of self-negation literally lead to her end?

The Portland Red Guide covers much of Portland’s radical past, particularly that of Socialists, Communists, and working class people who spoke truth to power. It also describes situations in which those in power, whether politicians or police, oppressed people they find threatening. The book is divided into different time periods, from the nineteenth century to the present. It includes Wobblies, doctors who performed abortions, black people harassed by racist cops, Communists and sympathizers attacked by McCarthyism, and so much more. I would have liked to have seen more on the women’s movement, and neither the Freedom Socialist Party nor its feminist branch Radical Women is ever mentioned. For that matter, Radical Women’s headquarters, The Bread and Roses Center on Killingsworth Street, isn’t included, nor is In Other Words: Women's Books and Resources. The Latin root for radical is "going to the root," not "extreme." Yet overall, this is a fascinating and informative book about a side of Portland often overlooked in mainstream history books. The book includes not only historical and biographical information, but also site listings with exact street addresses and maps, so the reader can take walks around Portland and see locations mentioned in the book. As a Portlander, I found it exciting to read about places I’ve seen or visited numerous times, and to anticipate looking for significant places mentioned in the Red Guide. Both history book and guide book, the Portland Red Guide will have a second, updated edition soon from Ooligan Press.

This is a young adult supernatural romance, the same subgenre as Twilight, but it is infinitely better than Twilight. The writing is lively, the characters are sparkling with life, the love interest Lena is a strong female character who, unlike Bella, is a strong individual and doesn’t fit in with creepy patriarchal values. The book is from the first person perspective of Ethan, a high school boy who is anxious to escape his boring, small-minded small town in the Deep South. The town becomes much more interesting when Lena, a teen with magic powers, moves in with her uncle the town recluse and shows up for class. She quickly stirs things up in the closed-minded community. My only complaint, besides a couple of dangling modifiers, is that the book includes a few fat phobic comments directed at one female student, something teens most emphatically do not need to read and that furthermore indicates that the authors should read Fat is a Feminist Issue. Overall, the book is full of rich detail, magic, and suspense. The characters are complex and sympathetic and come vividly to life. Since the book has two authors, no doubt they gave each other feedback. This is for anyone who enjoys dark fantasy.

This young adult fantasy novel is a richly descriptive and beautiful adventure in a fictional south Indian state, where a girl named Parvati is born in a poor family and strange, devastating weather strikes the community. Villagers shun her, treating her like a freak and believing that the village’s problems are all her fault. She does indeed have magic powers, which she tries to suppress. She has a magical talent for dancing, a talent that goes unappreciated until a dancing guru arrives and asks her to join his school. As someone who has visited India, I found the book draws a vivid and realistic picture of the country. The characters come alive, and Parvati is a particularly sympathetic character and a strong heroine who must follow her heart.

This quirky novel of magical realism is well-written, rich in detail and full of dry humor. The settings, Mexican villages by the ocean, are vividly described and come to life, as do the characters. However, I thought it dealt too lightly with deeply disturbing things, which is especially odd given that it’s from a first person point of view. This probably wasn’t intentional, but the author seems nonchalant about domestic violence and rape. In other words, I wanted the book to be more psychological. I also wanted Tortugina’s abusive brute of a husband to die a horrible and painful death.

In a world where mobster families practice dark magic, Cassel feels left out as the only one in his dysfunctional family who has no magic powers. He compensates with his abilities to con and lie much like the rest of the family. As if normal teen angst weren’t bad enough, he is haunted by the horrific death of a friend and struggles to remember how she died. When he dreams of a white cat talking to him and wakes up sleepwalking on the roof of his prep school dorm, his life spins out of control. Holly Black’s fairy tale trilogy, Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside, are among my favorite fantasy novels. While not about fairies, this is another urban fantasy by Holly Black, one that will keep you up all night reading to the end, as the plot twists and turns and Cassel learns disturbing things about himself and about his family. The world of curse worker mobsters is a highly original conception. The novel itself is excellent, but the cover art is yet another example, along with Justine Larbalestier’s Liar and Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass, of YA cover art whitewashing. Cassel has black hair, black eyes, and tan skin, yet the boy on the front cover has auburn hair and very pale skin. The continued racism in the publishing industry, which believes that featuring white people on the front cover will sell more copies, is a disgrace.

Incarceron is a vast, maze-like prison where the inmates believe that it’s impossible to escape, and some doubt the existence of a world outside the prison, but they also have legends about someone who did escape. Finn was supposedly born in the prison, but he only remembers the past two years. He meets a wise woman who recognizes the tattoo on his wrist and who thus gives him hope. When Finn’s companions betray her, he acquires a key through which a young woman named Claudia speaks, whom Finn believes can help him escape the prison. Claudia, meanwhile, needs to escape the future prison of marriage to a prince whom she despises. This is a magical world in which the elite own high technology but cling to Renaissance-era protocol and fashion, and where the unfortunate spend their entire lives in prison. Readers will find Incarceron better than the Harry Potter books, and I hope that it becomes just as popular.

Classroom Publishing is a great source for elementary and high school instructors who wish to use publishing in the classroom, in order to encourage literacy, learning, enthusiasm, and confidence. If student work is published, it is shared outside the classroom and sometimes even makes its way into the community; thus it gives students a sense of pride and participation. The book describes the different steps in publishing, interviews instructors, and supplies many concrete examples from schools and organizations nationwide. The original edition was published in 1992, and this second edition is entirely revised and updated, so that it is now appropriate for the digital world. Students and instructors will be inspired to write and publish their work and will have a great learning experience in the process.

This is an essential history of the Chinese and Chinese-Americans in the state of Oregon. It begins with why Chinese (mostly men) began to leave their homes behind and seek fortune in the west during the mid 1800s, and ends with the federal government allowing China-born American residents to become citizens so that they would participate in WWII. It includes general descriptions of the mining experience for Chinese in Oregon, and only briefly mentions specific individuals. The book has a disturbing account of a racist massacre on the shore of Snake River, and a chapter on white discrimination against Chinese people in Oregon. Dreams of the West is full of fascinating old photos, including of Portland’s Chinatown neighborhood.

This is a young adult historic novel, based on true events and real people, about an 1845 pioneer journey from Missouri to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. It is from the first person perspective of Lovisa King, a seventeen-year-old traveling with her extended family. Although Lovisa is spunky and often asserts herself, the protagonist and the tone are realistic for the time period. The journey is full of discoveries and hardships, and Lovisa is a woman by the time the journey ends. A joy to read, this coming-of-age story is thrilling, sad, amusing, and hopeful. The back of the book includes historic background, sources, and photos from the actual King family.

Uma, a graduate student, is waiting impatiently at an Indian visa office with strangers of several ethnicities and backgrounds, all intending to visit or move to India. Suddenly an earthquake strikes, and they are stranded in the office with no electricity and with a hole in the ceiling. Tension rises in the crisis, and Uma stops a fight when she proposes that each of them tell a significant story about their lives. As they each tell a personal tale, they find interconnectedness through this storytelling, for each one of them has experienced suffering, love, wishes, and loss. This is an intensely psychological and compelling novel.

This is the sequel to Abraham Lincoln: A Novel Life, in which Lincoln goes forward in time ninety years, to Illinois in 1955. He meets Joan Matcham and spends one day with her before he vanishes again, back to his own time. In Good Friday, we return to Joan Matcham and learn how Lincoln was able to send her a letter and how his visit has changed her life. Because of her connection to him, she is able to flit back and forth between her era and his. This is a magical and haunting page-turner in which the veil between two eras thins.

This horror novel is about a young woman named Madeline who has the psychic power to tap into people’s thoughts when she comes in contact with something they have touched. Because of this ability, everyone in the small Montana town where she grew up socially ostracizes her, even her parents. Fortunately, she has met a friend in the form of a new resident, George, and equally fortunate is her future as a college student far away. Tired of alienation and rejection, she takes a trip to Glacial National Park, where she encounters a monster far more horrible than social stigma. When Madeline was fourteen years old, a serial killer who knew about her psychic abilities killed her best friend in front of her, and Madeline believed that if the killer hadn’t known about her powers, he would have left her friend alone. Ever since then, Madeline has considered her “gift” a curse and has vowed not to ever use it to help detect murders, because she doesn’t want to absorb so many evil memories and thoughts and thus experience similar trauma. However, now that a monster is hunting her and killing others in Glacial National Park, she must use her psychic powers or the monster will continue killing. Voracious is a gripping and terrifying novel that is character-driven and with a particularly strong female protagonist. It reminds me of Frankenstein, due to the monster chasing Madeline, the threat of others’ deaths, and above all Madeline’s conversations with the monster, which is intelligent and capable of human speech. Full of vivid description, fast-paced action, and suspense, I highly recommend this book.

Abraham Lincoln: a Novel Life is a fun time travel novel in which Abraham Lincoln unintentionally goes forward in time ninety years, to 1955, and meets a woman, Joan Matcham, to whom he accidentally introduces himself as Abraham Lincoln and then proceeds to explain. They spend an entire day together and fall in love…before Lincoln goes back to 1865. The novel is historically educational and brings Abraham Lincoln--and Mary Todd Lincoln--to life. In the back of the book is an engaging list of brief biographies on various historic figures who appear in the novel.

Personal accounts are accompanied by portraits taken by photographer Tara Todras-Whitehill, including pictures of women as famous as Ani DiFranco and Gloria Steinem, wearing the “I had an Abortion” t-shirt. This volume is not about yelling in the streets or holding picket signs; it is not about being confrontational and aggressive toward anti-choice “activists.” It is about presenting the facts of what women went through and showing how necessary abortion is in an imperfect world. As long as we are yelling at each other and threatening each other, rather than listening and talking calmly, we can’t reach an understanding. Abortion & Life has a buddha-like, gentle approach to the subject of abortion, not using the “us and them” mentality that is so common but rather showing why abortion is important, in hopes that abortion’s enemies will make some attempt at tolerance.

The word “radical” does not mean “extreme” but rather “going to the root.” That is, being radical is about going to the root of the problem, the root of our patriarchal a.k.a. dominator society, finding solutions for overthrowing it, and living as much as possible outside of the dominant system. During the same-sex marriage debate, I kept reflecting on how marriage was invented for the purpose of enslaving women. I kept signing petitions in favor of gay marriage while feeling apprehensive and wondering why lesbians, especially, would want to participate in such a patriarchal establishment. Reading the anthology That’s Revolting was a great relief, because it proves that many people see things the same way I do, from a radical point of view rather than a liberal point of view. That’s Revolting is for those who want a nonviolent revolution, not a white picket fence and a house in suburbia. It is for those who question the American dream rather than gobble up capitalism, respectability, or the nuclear family lifestyle. It is for those who wish to overthrown marriage and the military, not participate in them. This diverse anthology is social criticism, inspiration, words of reassurance that radical activism continues, and a call to action.

The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show is about Frankka, a lapsed Catholic with a rather peculiar psychic ability: while fasting, she can concentrate on her wrists and make them bleed. For seven years she lives on the road with a performance troupe that includes a drag queen who levitates while dressed like a Catholic nun, a fortune teller and former battered wife with a small child, a fire-breather, and a bearded woman. They rarely stay in the same town or city for a week, and satirizing the Christian religion means they sometimes encounter hostility from fundamentalists (including the “God Hates Fags” picketers whom I frequently saw in Kansas). Meanwhile, Frankka has very realistic and moving flashbacks to psychological traumas from her childhood and youth. Although I normally avoid books that are from a Xian perspective, I decided to read The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show because Ariel Gore impressed me at a couple of author readings. To my relief, this book did not handle Xianity in a way that made me want to hurl chunks: instead, the narrator is very critical of the patriarchy in organized Catholicism and aware that goddesses such as Brigit were taken and turned into saints. The book goes on to show that even Christianity--and dare I saw Catholicism--can involve genuine spirituality, when it is in the mystical tradition rather than the way it is practiced as an organized religion. Frankka has a hobby of writing her own versions of the lives of saints, each a mystical individual. If only they were typical. This is an excellently written literary novel with strongly developed, believable, and engaging characters.

This short story collection begins with very helpful background information on Croatia, where all of the stories take place. It is a war-torn and extremely messed-up country, and the background information, in addition to the author’s introductory paragraph before each story, serves to help the reader understand what is behind the stories. I frequently felt angry and annoyed with characters throughout the book, for the author realistically portrays very dysfunctional and foolish people surviving in a toxic culture.

This short novel is simultaneously funny and sad. In modern-day Croatia, the characters have no idea how to seek happiness in their post-traumatic stress syndrome lives. They foolishly seek it through alcohol, sex, and dysfunctional relationships. While their lives seem largely meaningless and pathetic, and Baba and Vera in particular need to take communication lessons from Marshall Rosenberg, the reader nonetheless manages to sympathize with them and hopes that they make some progress.

Speaking Out is a teacher’s guidebook on conflict resolution, with Sierra Leone as a concrete example. It gives background information on the culture and history of Sierra Leone, briefly describes the atrocities of the country’s civil war and how it happened, and discusses what the communities have been doing in an attempt to recover from the civil war. Of particular interest is the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC), which are gatherings of both victims and perpetrators who talk about what happened. The TRCs are for the sake of healing and moving on, forgiving and forgetting, and the book explains how they are more effective than the more traditional Special Court. The one thing with which I disagree in this book is the assumption that there is such a thing as justified war; it gives the American Revolution as an example, overlooking the fact that the American Revolution could have used exclusively nonviolent rebellion, such as the Boston Tea Party. Just because people don’t know how to go about a nonviolent revolution doesn’t mean it’s not possible to do so. The book includes anonymous interviews. It also includes activities for class, a DVD called Diamonds, Guns, and Rice, and essays that are meant to be handouts for students.

The Weight of the Sun by Geronimo Tagatac is a collection of interconnected short stories with a predominantly melancholy tone, brilliantly portraying characters who experience trauma from child abuse, loneliness, abandonment, broken dreams, and the senseless violence of war. The author poignantly expresses the universal truth of human emotions and needs. It is appropriate that some of the stories involve ghosts, such as “What Comes After Nineteen,” in which a woman picks up a hitchhiker after noticing that he’s a ghost; even without ghosts the stories are haunting.

In the early twentieth century, J. Harlen Bretz was a geologist who walked around what were believed to be glacial formations carved through mountains and valleys in the states of Oregon and Washington. He took detailed notes and observed rock patterns from Spokane to Portland, Oregon…and came to the conclusion that a huge prehistoric flood created the canyon called the Scablands. This was completely at odds with the beliefs of established geologists of the time, and he knew this, but he stood up for truth anyway. This book proves to be not only a scientific study but also a riveting drama.

This collection of flash fiction--bare bone stories no more than five hundred words each--includes a wide variety of stories that, despite their brevity, have a complete beginning, middle, and end. The stories include (among others): the thoughts of two people who meet in an airplane; an unappreciative husband's karma catching up with him; a divorced couple dining out at a Chinese restaurant; and a mentally unhinged and jealous victim of unrequited love. Oh, yes, there's a bizarre science fiction story involving characters who are experiencing a disturbing metamorphosis...but I recommend that you take the time to read the book yourself.

This is a nontraditional history book: a collection of poems from the perspectives of five people from America's past. They are not the white male presidents, politicians, or explorers that elementary school history books emphasize, and they are not simplified or idealized. One is a serial killer of Indians, one is a slave who travels with Lewis and Clark, one is a nineteenth century female architect, and another is an abused wife who resorts to murdering her husband and ends up in prison. They are all complex and flawed characters brought back to life through this stirring collection of poetry about people who, for the most part, do not experience justice.

As a resident of Oregon, I find this collection of poetry inspiring, making me want to wander around the state, especially to Corvallis, Ashland, and more of the coast than I have yet visited. Also, his description of Seaside, Oregon is just as I remember it. Lots of detail.

Kalix is a neurotic and laudanum-addicted werewolf with low self-esteem from a highly dysfunctional Scottish werewolf clan, the MacRinnalchs. She is living on the run in London thanks to family members who want her either dead or imprisoned. As gloomy as this sounds, the book is extremely funny, especially during scenes with a frivolous fire spirit who’s obsessed with high fashion and has made friends with the Enchantress, a very talented fashion designer who also happens to be a werewolf. Meanwhile, the MacRinnalch Thane, Kalix’s dad, dies and both of his sons want to become Thane and will do just about anything to get the majority vote. The combination of humor and darkness, and the London setting, reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere.

This hilarious romp of a time travel novel is written in contemporary style but with a decidedly Regency setting. After reading the blurb, I expected the novel to begin in the twenty-first century, but characteristic of twenty-first century novels, it plunges directly into the action, with the protagonist, “Jane Mansfield” waking up in strange surroundings after a riding accident. The trouble is, this is no longer the real Jane Mansfield but Courtney Strong, a twenty-first century woman trapped in early nineteenth-century Jane Mansfield’s body. The plot reminded me of both Pride and Prejudice and Doctor Who. While the writing style is contemporary, the richly described setting is straight out of a Jane Austen novel, and the characters appropriately speak as if they’re from a Jane Austen novel. Jane’s mother in particular comes across as a character one would expect to find in a novel by Austen; she is narcissistic and devoid of affection or kindness toward her daughter. The character Louisa is reminiscent of Mrs. Jennings in Sense and Sensibility but proves to be rather more sinister. No novel by Austen would include such details as the protagonist desperately needing to go pee and the servant presenting her with a chamber pot. Nor would an Austen novel involve the protagonist uttering a lewd joke to a man who proposes to her. As I read, I both laughed and felt painfully embarrassed alongside the main character. On a more serious side, the main character sprinkles the narration with feminist analysis of the era in which she has found herself trapped in more than one sense. She is also appalled by how hygienically challenged Regency society is. This is a delightful and insightful novel that is almost impossible to put down.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has the same essential plot as the original…but with zombies and references added here and there throughout the novel. A zombie epidemic is all over England, so that England is divided into walled zones and it is dangerous to be out and about in the English countryside unless you have zombie slaying skills. Early in the book I thought that cremation would solve the problem, and indeed there are mounds where zombies are burned, but if someone is bitten by a zombie, they can become one while still alive. Thus it is the original classic but set in a bizarre alternate reality and containing rather odd plot twists. Graham-Smith punishes a couple of characters, Wickham and Mr. Collins, much more harshly than does Austen. Zombies, dojos, martial arts and references to the “Orient” in the world of Jane Austen make for some extremely surreal and hilarious moments. In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Bennett sisters and their father have previously gone to China and learned martial arts in order to slay zombies. Elizabeth in particular is a very talented zombie slayer. Mr. Darcy, on the other hand, went to Japan and studied martial arts there for the same motivation. They are both cold-blooded killers, and the reader has to set aside ethics in order to find certain events in the book amusing. I am one of those people who like to read about protagonists that I like. Since Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy are cold-blooded killers and Elizabeth, at least, casually kills off ninjas in a sparring match and even tears out one ninja’s heart and takes a bite out of it, I find that I don’t actually like this version of Elizabeth Bennett or Fitzwilliam Darcy. Nonetheless, alternating between scenes in which the main characters show themselves to be brutal killers with scenes in which they are concerned about proper behavior strikes me as hilarious, because there’s nothing nice and proper about murdering or crippling other characters. Despite the main characters as killers, I still manage to find the book highly amusing and the language more or less faithful to Jane Austen’s style and era. It proves to be unpredictable and somewhat reminiscent of Japanese anime, especially with the dojos at Longbourn and Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s home, Rosings. The martial arts- and zombie-related plot twists are extremely unpredictable and gruesome. I was hoping that Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy would do something that would altogether eliminate the zombie problems at the end of the book, but no, zombies continue to be epidemic in this alternate reality. I notice that during a scene while Elizabeth is staying at Netherfield to take care of Jane while she has a cold, and Mr. Darcy is sitting in the drawing room writing letters with Miss Bingley chattering away at him, there are some significant changes in the text that are not exclusively related to zombies. Mr. Darcy is much ruder to his admirer and complains about her chattering. Afterwards, the conversation amid the group in the drawing room is significantly shorter than it is in Pride and Prejudice. When the Bingley sisters sing at the piano, they sing a wacky song about defending England against zombies that is most definitely not in the original. A lot of the dialogue is cut short, dumbed down for modern audiences, but more importantly allowing the book to have plenty of zombie scenes without doubling its length. However, at the risk of sounding too knit-picking, I noticed one scene in which the coauthor cut a little too much of the dialogue. It is just after Elizabeth has refused Mr. Collins’s proposal and her mother speaks to Mr. Collins. Graham-Smith has left out Collins’s comment that if Lizzie is willful and foolish, then maybe it’s better if he doesn’t marry her. However, the coauthor leaves in Mrs. Bennett’s comment to her husband that Mr. Collins is beginning to change his mind about marrying Elizabeth. This could be cause for confusion for someone who doesn’t have the original fresh in mind. Fortunately, I am reading both version of Pride and Prejudice simultaneously, chapter by chapter. Chipmunks make an appearance on page 90, although I happen to know that chipmunks are only from North America and are not native of England. I learned this from an Englishman in India, when we were discussing the Indian squirrels that look like chipmunks with unusually bushy tails. The flaw that raises my ire and makes me want to chop the coauthor’s head off with a Samurai sword is the housekeeper’s bound feet at Pemberley. The manor-house is built in the style of a Japanese palace, which makes sense considering that Mr. Darcy has had his martial arts training in Japan. The housekeeper is wearing a kimono, but she has bound feet, which was strictly a Chinese, not Japanese, tradition. It is furthermore a particularly sadistic and misogynistic tradition that involves grossly mutilating a girl’s feet and making it very difficult for her to walk. The housekeeper is English, not Chinese, making it all the more unlikely that she would be willing to have her feet bound. My ability to detach from ethics for the sake of sitting back and laughing draws the line here; bound feet are no laughing matter. In short, the book is not perfect, but few things are. On a more positive side, I understand the use of shortening dialogue significantly and am glad that Seth Grahame-Smith did this, because otherwise this book would be nearly twice as long as the original. I have come to the conclusion that while Pride and Prejudice with Zombies is certainly entertaining and highly amusing, it simply does not compare to the original Pride and Prejudice and will not be read for as many years.