Kudos to Booklist Onliine for including this article, Classic Monster Mash-ups as the topic of their May 15 Core Collection feature. (Core Collection, for those of you who are not librarians, means “you gotta have this one in your collection, NOW!)

Christine Meloni put together a nice introduction to the subgenre, with an annotated booklist of some of the better known books (she did note that some of them, like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer are not actually mash-ups. I was familiar with a lot of these but good Lord, someone out there really thinks Jane Austen and zombies are a rockin’ combination! I counted FIVE related books on Meloni’s list, and she didn’t even include the two sequels to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!

My only quibble, and I mention this mainly because I’ve recently become sensitive to it, is that once again, these books are never described as horror fiction- they are “supernatural literary fiction”. You know, if a teenage boy picks up a book promising zombies and “ultraviolent mayhem”, it’s probably not because he cares about the literary value of the timeless romance between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Outside of that, I really appreciated Meloni’s comments about monster mash-ups- that they can be fun and are worth reading. Thanks, Christine!