How they should be [Ryan]:

If you’re like me — a normal, oxygen-breathing, food-eating, Jane Austen-hating lifeform — you will, at some point in your life, have to read books you will have no desire to read. For instance, many a male has been made to suffer through the likes of Pride and Prejudice. Luckily for those of us whose taste involves a little less Victorian prattling, there’s a book out that combines the classic novel with, according to the back of the book, “zombie mayhem.” The book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is making its way into the bookshelves of culture afficionados everywhere.

In such a spirit, here are more books, transformed from their classic state to something appealing and readable.

War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy

In the midst of warring Europe, the emperor Napoleon is discovered to be a robot from the future sent to provoke the world into full-scale war. Russia and her allies unite against this new threat. Will the noble prince Andrei Bolkonsky woo the luscious Natasha Rostov? Will Napoleon be sent back to the year 2018? Will the book ever end? Find out in War and Peace.

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte¨

In keeping with my belief that books should be worth what you pay for them, the entire book is nothing but removable Craigo’s coupons and coloring pages. Enjoy. The end.

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

In this thriller set in the Roaring Twenties, socialite Jay Gatsby is found murdered in his home. Federal agent Nick Carroway finds that the murder is only part of a conspiracy, and he has 24 hours to stop the wheels of treachery before the Soviet Union destroys the American dream. Also, there’s something about materialism and the decadence of aristocracy.

Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller’s classic tragedy introduces Willy Loman, a down-on-his-luck salesman whose struggle with his own futility devastates his family and leads the reader to investigate mortality and the value of self-knowledge. SPOILER WARNING: A dinosaur eats Willy.

Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey is the secret location of a covert organization bent on world domination. Can the noble heroine, Catherine Morland, outwit the bad guys and employ her arsenal of top-secret gadgets in time to stop the nuclear weapon from launching, all the while extricating herself from the intricacies of high society?

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s classic play opens with the marriage of the ruler of Athens, unleashing a flurry of romantic misadventures, which are brutally cut short when the minions of the Dark Lord Sauron are unleashed upon the land. The play features a climactic duel to the death between the trickster Puck and the wizard Gandalf.

Twilight
Stephenie Meyer

Twilight is not a classic, by any means, but I must continue to wage my holy crusade against its inscrutable appeal. Twenty pages into the book, vampire Edward Cullen grows tired of new girl Bella Swann’s incessant chattering about how perfect he is and eats her. He decides he and the entire human race are better off without her pubescent whining and goes on with his immortal life. The rest of the book is spent defending the sleepy town of Forks from brain-sucking aliens.

Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

The devastation and brother-against-brother action of the Civil War dominates the novel, with a few afterthoughts given to the romance between Whats-Her-Name and that one guy.

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

In the midst of the Dust Bowl, an impoverished farming family chases a dream — until one day, Nazi archeologists unearth clues in the desert leading to the lost Ark of the Covenant and the fabulous power contained within the Ark’s mystic confines.