You can read all the online book reviews in the world, but nothing beats real-world conversations between readers and authors.

In an ongoing effort to build community among readers, writers, and publishing types in real life, we are hosting our next Mediabistro Book Club on Wednesday, August 17, 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Union Square Lounge on 30 East 16th Street.

Follow this link to RSVP for the free party–we will have  huge stack of giveaway books and lots of great literary conversation. Our featured books include a novel about an out of control reality show, a naked cookbook, conversations with a showbiz guru and bedbugs from hell. If you live too far away, check out our Authors Who Visit Book Clubs directory and set up your own literary party.

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Reviewed by Louise Leetch
Read more about GalleyCat Reviews

My taste in books runs to the ilk of Cold Mountain. I haven’t read one single vampire book. I never read the Harry Potter series and I never could get into fantasy books–including the Lord of the Rings! I guess I’m just a snob.

When I began reading Ben H. Winters‘ mash-up novel, Android Karenina, my hopes were not high for a quick, light or funny read. Oddly enough, it was all three. Mash-ups are the latest thing in the literary world, mixing classics with new world monsters and demons. It’s not really all that new; the music world has been doing it for ages. Mad Magazine used to rewrite the comics–Al Capp writing Brenda Starr, for instance.

Winters, a playwright, librettist, and author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, connects all of Tolstoy’s dots in the cleverly bizarre world he has created and he transforms a Russian novel into a reasonably demented work of science fiction.

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Submissions for the World’s Longest Literary Remix contest are rolling in, including a piece by professional remixer Ben H. Winters. Over at Quirk Books, Winters has written Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and the upcoming Android Karenina.

Winters joined a brave crew of readers in rewriting one page from a Horatio Alger novel for fun and prizes–read his entry after the jump. 150 pre-registered GalleyCat Reviews readers have signed up to rewrite one page of Joe’s Luck: Always Wide Awake (cover pictured, via).

We will publish the remixed text as a free digital book. Each remix contributor will be eligible for a random drawing of special giveaway prizes. Three excellent sponsors have donated prizes:

1-Scribd.com and Blurb.com are donating 10 printed copies of the completely remixed novel, using the company’s new print-on-demand service.

2- The remixing experts at Quirk Books will give one lucky winner an assortment of Quirk Classics prizes, including: a signed copy of the deluxe Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (PPZ), the Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters audio book, the audio and print version of PPZ: Dawn of The Dreadfuls, an Android Karenina poster, an assortment of PPZ postcards and a PPZ journal. It’s a prize package worth over $100.

3-The multimedia literary journal Electric Literature will donate “Electric Literature: Year One”–a complete set of the first four issues of the journal–a $40 value.

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Today Quirk Books unveiled the cover to the 512-page mash-up book, Android Karenina. Written by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters, the book will be released in June.

The book continued the “zombie-fication of literature” trend that has swept publishing since Pride and Prejudice and Zombies became a bestseller. According to the release, the book will bring robotic mayhem to the classic novel:

“These characters live in a steampunk-inspired world of robotic butlers, clumsy automatons, and rudimentary mechanical devices. But when these copper-plated machines begin to revolt against their human masters, our characters must fight back using state-of-the-art 19th-century technology–and a sleek new model of ultra-human cyborgs like nothing the world has ever seen.”

You can brush up on the original in this free eBook.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Leo Tolstoy‘s death, Quirk Books will extend its remix series of classic literature with “Android Karenina.” The move carries the “zombie-fication of literature” trend into Russian classics.

Quirk plans on 200,000 copies for the book’s first print run, and the title will debut in June. They expect to unveil the real cover in February. The book will be co-authored by Ben H. Winters, who most recently wrote “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” for Quirk. GalleyCat interviewed Winters last year about the project.

Here’s more from the release: “As in the original novel, our story follows two relationships: The tragic adulterous love affair of Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, and the more hopeful marriage of Nikolai Levin and Princess Kitty Shcherbatskaya. These characters live in a steampunk-inspired world of robotic butlers, clumsy automatons, and rudimentary mechanical devices. But when these copper-plated machines begin to revolt against their human masters, our characters must fight back using state-of-the-art 19th-century technology–and a sleek new model of ultra-human cyborgs like nothing the world has ever seen.”

Brush up with the original in this free eBook.