"Oh! The horror!"

Warm weather has arrived, blue skies and sun, but I was sick so I didn't go out. Instead, Christina came over and we talked about books. I guess you could say we were two chicks talking Lit though I hate the term "Chick Lit" just as much as I hate the term "Chick Flicks" (though I've been guilty of sneaking off to a few).

I guess Jane Austen re-makes count as "chick flicks" though Bob will actually watch those. Poor Jane Austen.  All those romanticized remakes. Then murder mysteries appeared with Austen as the detective and now her books have morphed into horror stories. I see their ghastly covers in bookstores everywhere: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Die, Die, My Darcy and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.  It's a travesty.

I looked up the definition of "travesty" to see if I was using the word correctly and found out, to my surprise, that the term in its most literal sense perfectly describes the books:

1. An exaggerated or grotesque imitation, such as the parody of a literary work.

Though I intended another meaning:

2. a distorted or debased version of something, a travesty of justice

for these travesties do a great injustice to poor Miss Austen's literary oeuvre. (Though I confess I do like some of the remakes. Colin Firth as Darcy brings out the werewolf in me, that is to say, my inner Flick Chick.)