Will Banned Books Get Boys Interested in Jane Austen?

From Annual Jane Austen Night*

Geek Mom offered an interesting article on Wired on how to get teenage boys to read the classics.

Why, simple! Give them a list of banned books, like:

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Stranger by Albert Camus
• Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Whoa! Pride and Prejudice? Darcy's dip in the lake certainly was not written by Jane. Even Geek Mom knew that. So she went to the source to find out why pimply pre-pubescent boys would read a spinster's 200 year-old-novel:

"If you’re wondering about that last one … well, as Nick, another of the boys in the group, explained, “It’s good to read to get the cultural references.” I suspect the allusions Nick was trying to understand involved the Undead, but hey, I’m not going to argue with anything that could get my kids to voluntarily pick up Jane Austen."

They're reading the original in order to understand Pride and Prejudice and Zombies??!!!! Ack! Guess that's is better than endlessly playing World of Warcraft or hanging around the mall.

*Image: Click on this link