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On the menu tonight: WORLD WAR Z Amuse BoucheOur rich Tartare à la Homo Sapien will astonish you with its hauntingly familiar flavors, its bright and vivid colors, and the truly gamey taste of terror, tears, and trauma. Fresh kill will never appear so carefully arranged and presented: prepare yourself for a buffet that appeases both the palate and the intellect.AppetizerA surprisingly hearty summer soup: tantalizing hints of summer flavors frozen solid, then slowly re-animated to surprise the...
Thoughtful and thought-provoking. Not at all the typical zombie book, and not at all what I expected. Published in 2006, the issues and underlying plot points are as pertinent today as then. What would happen in a real zombie apocalypse? Given current politics, economics, cultural trends, and geography, I'd be willing to bet it happens closely to Brooks' vision.World War Z is structured along the lines of a documentary, a collection of remembrances about the world-wide zombie war. Divided by ch...
Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature....Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.I first read this book at least ten years a
A very pleasant surprise.TBT, not a huge fan of the zombie sub-genre: never watched an episode of the Walking Dead, never really bought into it as a fantasy vehicle.So – I picked this up with not so much trepidation as an allowance that I probably would not love it. I didn’t LOVE it, but liked it a lot more than I expected I would.Here’s the thing:It’s not JUST about an I Am Legend scenario where the world turns into monsters. Well – it sort of IS about that – but it’s also about a lot more. Aut...
There are reasons to be wary of this book. The title is a little silly, and Max Brooks's Zombie Survival Guide was tongue in cheek. Hell, he's the son of legendary comedy director Mel Brooks. And zombies are creatures that gained popularity thanks to film, which is contrary to the nature of most good creatures. Vampires, ghosts, wizards, witches, dragons, orcs, goblins, angels, werewolves and even Frankenstein's undead abomination came from literature first, and entered film later. Film seldom c...
This book was initially recommended to me by several people in the office and since I love zombies and apocalyptic themes, well, I was pretty excited. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations and I struggled to finish it. (I'm going to write this review under the assumption that the reader has some inkling about the story and how it's constructed.)There are two issues that killed it for me. Firstly, most of the characters had the same--or similar--voice. Of course this is partly to d...
(My full review of this book is longer than Goodreads' word-count limitations; find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)Anytime I hear of some funny, gimmicky book suddenly becoming popular among the hipster set, I always squint my eyes and brace myself for the worst; because usually when it comes to such books, the worst is all you can expect to find, an endless series of fluffy pop-culture pieces designed specifically for crafty point-of-pur...
New week, New BookTube Video - all about the best (and worst) literary apocalypses to live through!The Written Review Humanity survived Zombie apacolypse. Like after any great tragedy, the government wants a record. Max Brooks is their oral historian. Only, when he hands his documents, the bureaucracy whittles it down to the bare facts. Humans, over every nation, dragged their bone weary bodies through this war. They are now faced with the numbing task of rebuilding society. They deserve
I know what you're thinking. "Five stars for this book? Why???" If you've been following my reviews then you know I tend to stress over how many stars to give a book, and I'm not one to hand out five-star ratings willy-nilly. I'm usually quite cautious when it comes to handing out that all-important fifth star. I'm stingy. That being said, every once in a while a book, that may or may not be amazing, comes along and wows me. And now you're (probably) thinking: "But Penny, it's a book about zombi...
”The book of war, the one we’ve been writing since one ape slapped another was completely useless in this situation. We had to write a new one from scratch.”With most apocalyptic situations, I think the hardest part to deal with is that there are no wrong decisions or right decisions. There are simply too many variables to consider if your ultimate goal is to survive. The most meticulously planned strategies can still result in failure. You make the best decisions you can and then hope for a bit...
I just can't get on this bandwagon. The pseudo-government reports the book is written in handicap it in many ways. First, there are no protagonists to grow with, no story arc, no climax, etc. You know what's going to happen from day one--there was a world crisis involving zombies and at least some people live to tell the tale. The sure knowledge of the outcome deflates any tension and book feels flacid. The pseudo-scientific jargon is a poor imitation (my sister, a nurse, tossed aside Brooks' o
At this current moment in time my husband and I do not actually have a working will. We are the legal definition of intestate. We have not yet made any preparations for our death and we only have life insurance/house insurance because his mother organized the whole damn thing (come to mention it she is also the reason we have electricity, water and a phone line - the internet though was all us because we'd die without it.)So believe me when I say that we don't organize... anything. Except our zo...
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max BrooksWorld War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a 2006 zombie apocalyptic horror novel written by American author Max Brooks. The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with up...
So, I've seen the movie several times when it was on TV, and I have to say that I even watched a scene or two a couple of dozen times on Youtube. Yes, the action and visuals are fantastic. (Okay, except the one where the guy tears his own tooth, yuck!)But after reading the comments where people were angry at the movie, saying that it does not hold a candle to the book, I knew I had to read it. And yes, I do agree that the only things the movie took from the book were the zombies and Israel build...
this book is about zombies the same way the bible is about god. they are mostly background actors who are the reason other characters do what they do and occasionally they will rarrrr in and kill a bunch of people because they cant help it, but mostly they are an invisible presence, always to be feared but never given a voice. this whole book takes place after the zombies have already destroyed most of the world and is a collection of the testimonials of hundreds (?) of different characters deta...
Hey, I have a booktube channel (youtube for book reviews) and I do video reviews for books like this one, epic fantasy, science fiction, media related to them, and more. Please subscribe here!Update: See end of review for movie review.I've broken my cardinal rule for reading books just before the movie comes out. This rule I've alluded to is the following - I don't read the book directly before the movie (at least 1 year before or it must be read after or just wait on the movies). The reason fo...
The deadly epidemic started in China. This time it’s ... zombies.4.5 stars, rounding up because sheer brilliance.I'm not, generally speaking, a fan of horror fiction in general or zombie tales in particular, but World War Z popped up on my radar so many times that I finally decided to give it a go. (I checked it out from the library; I wasn't going to stick my neck that far out for this book that I'd pay actual money for it.)Anyway. World War Z takes the quasi-historical documentary approach to
ME JUST SIMPLE ZOMBIE BUT NO UNDERSTAND WHY LIVING SO PREJUDICED AGAINST DEAD TOLERATE SUCH HATEFUL BOOK BOOK PRESENT TOTAL ONE-SIDED CASE OF FAKE WAR MAN VERSUS ZOMBIES PORTRAYS ZOMBIES AS MINDLESS AND HAS NO COMPASSION FOR FEELINGS HOPES DREAMS DESIRES OF RECENTLY ALIVE LIKE SMELL THE PRETTY FLOWERS ON GRAVE AND WHERE DID LEG GO USED TO HAVE TWO AND WHAT DOES BRAIN TASTE LIKE SO SUE ME AM CURIOUS ANYWAY BOOK GOES AROUND WORLD SHOWING MAN FIGHT ZOMBIES AND ALL TIMES MAN EITHER KILL ZOMBIE WITH
This book is not a novel. You learn very little about the characters (even the narrator) and cannot follow them from story to story. There's no common thread, no arc, etc. It's a hodgepodge. For many of you, this is all you need to know about this book.If you're looking for a great zombie NOVEL, my favorite is Cryonic: A Zombie NovelI suppose there are parallels between the book and the movie in the sense that both are disjointed. It's too big a story to tell and to be done properly Brooks shoul...
As in the ironic Zombie survival guide, Brooks uses all possible aspects of a zombie apocalypse, from it´s beginning until how it could end, the sociological, economic and political consequences and each human's individual reaction to it to describe the happenings.Switching between the interviews, the book gives a new and more personal view on this very prominent topic, avoiding stereotypes and overused tropes and is instead telling it from the points of view of very different people that wouldn...