Jane Eyre took the quiz: What Color Room Should You Not Be In?

We would like to introduce you to an upcoming book by Sarah Schmelling with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights references:

Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float:
Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook
# Paperback: 288 pages
# Publisher: Plume (August 25, 2009)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0452295734
# ISBN-13: 978-0452295735

When humorist Sarah Schmelling transformed Hamlet into a Facebook news feed, it launched the next big humor trend-Facebook lit. This hilarious book is the first to bring more than fifty authors and stories from classic literature back to life and online. Schmelling uses the conventions of social networking-profile pages, status updates, news feeds, and applications-to retell everything from The Odyssey to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Lolita.

Every day 150 million active users of Facebook log on to reconnect with old classmates, add pictures, share quizzes, and post news stories, notes, and videos. In Schmelling-s network, Satan and Beelzebub connect using the fiend finder, Don Quixote vows vengeance against Superpoke, Jane Eyre listens to Jay-Z-s -Hard-Knock Life- on repeat, Ernest Hemingway completes the -Are you a real man?- quiz, and Oedipus works on his family tree.

A loving spoof of the most-trafficked social networking website in the world and a playful game of literary who-s who, Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float will have book lovers and Facebook addicts alike twittering with joy.

The author seems to be particularly fond of Jane Eyre:

11) Jane Eyre took the quiz: What Color Room Should You Not Be In? with the result “Red.”

And from the author's facebook:

I had never read Jane Eyre before and I still can’t believe I went so long without her and that rascal Rochester in my life.
I know all of these books are classics. Of course they are classics. That doesn’t mean I didn’t frequently follow my husband around flapping a book and shouting, “This is so GOOD!”
He also had to hear many tidbits of information like: Did you know Oscar Wilde once courted Bram Stoker’s wife? Or that the ‘u’ was just randomly added to Faulkner’s name? Or that Jane Eyre is so GOOD? With the Red Room and the gothness and the batty attic wife? (Said his batty basement wife.) (...)
mong the things I learned while writing this book: Berthas get a bad rap in literature. Mr. Rochester’s crazy attic wife? Bertha. Lady Chatterley’s lover’s crazy estranged wife? Bertha. The woman in The House of Mirth who pretty much started Lily Bart on her tragic poverty spiral? You get the idea.

Of course the book has its own facebook page and twitter channel. An advanced review can be read in the Baltimore Sun:

If you liked: Facebook, MySpace, classic literature, or making fun of every book you had to read in high school, you'll love reliving these tomes through the Internet prism.
Avoid this if: Making fun of Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Oscar Wilde or Emily Bronte raises your blood pressure. No one is safe in Schmelling's social network! (Nancy Johnston)

Categories: Books, Humour