Tag Archives: zombies

Weekend Reads: Red, White, and Blue

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This is a day late because a cold has sidelined me, but it is a long weekend here in the US because Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which is a federal holiday.

Monday is also Inauguration for the U.S. President. So, with that in mind, here are some “American themed” (very broadly speaking) suggestions for your next read.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman living in the US. The narrative moves between the past and the present and is interspersed with blog posts Ifemelu has written about life as a Non-American African in the U.S. This had me hooked immediately. The characters were real and vivid and it gave me so much to think about.

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Beth and I both loved this book, a first in the series. It is an alternate history set immediately after the Civil War…but with zombies. It is written from the perspective of a Black woman who has to navigate both the terror of a zombie-filled world and the racism of the time period. Bonus, the audio book is read by one of my favorite narrators, Bahni Turpin.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Since he’s about to be our new vice president, you can take a whack at J.D. Vance’s memoir. The audiobook is read by the author and it is a well-written tale about his life growing up in Appalachia. Drug addiction, incarceration, lack of resources, broken families, grit, and perseverance all make an appearance. Honestly, I was lukewarm about the memoir when I read it first in 2018 and I’m still pretty meh about it now. But maybe you’ll like it better!

Ms. Marvel No Normal by G. Willow Wilson

Kamala Khan is such a wonderful character. I enjoy her so much. She is your typical American teenager, wanting to fit in but also stand out, wanting to make her parents happy but also follow her dreams. When she finds she has super powers, she does the only thing she can think to do, and that is help people. If you don’t know Kamala Khan, I highly recommend you give her comics a try.

Review: World War Z by Max Brooks

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Another excellent selection from my public library. This is a re-read for me. I listened to the audio, which I remember being spectacular when it first came out. Then I remembered the movie coming out and hearing disappointing reviews, so I skipped it. The book is written as an oral history about a dozen years after global victory in the great zombie war. All kinds of people are interviewed and they share their stories about the early days and their first encounters, the trajectory of the outbreak, various wilderness situations, management, government, victory, surrender. It’s a really fun piece of zombie fiction.

I picked it up again recently because I ended up watching the film recently. I know it’s a cliche that the book is always better than the movie, but here it’s true. The movie uses some of the book as background for just your bog-standard dude-works-hard-and-finds-the-key-to-save-the-day story. He’s a real hero. Boring. The book, on the other hand, is full of regular people sorting themselves, their families, and their communities out. It’s young adults telling you about their lost childhoods, people who made tough choices and maybe saved some of humanity trying to make sense of it all. It’s people running government agencies that never needed to exist before now. It’s billionaires being monsters. The book really is something; an interesting twist on the zombie apocalypse. The text is a little dated, but reading it post pandemic makes it eerily real in some ways. There’s panic, misinformation, deniers, true believers… it all feels a little familiar. This isn’t my first zombie fiction in an endemic Covid world, so I had some expectation of what would be the most upsetting about it. I thought, perhaps, it would be loads of people getting sick but, no, it turns out watching people disregard and endanger others is what did it for me. Because this is written after the main events being described, you don’t get the immediacy of having to watch a character die because someone else made a terrible choice.

So, if you like oral histories, zombies, and knowing that there’s some kind of happy ending, this is for you.

Quick Review: Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

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Take a bow Justina Ireland. This series is just so good. Zombies, Queer heroine, old western story. It really has it all. At the end of Dread Nation, Jane and Katherine had to escape Summerland after it was overrun by Shamblers Of course, nothing is simple for them and they suffer one tragedy after another. I got a tell you, it was interesting reading this right before Coronavirus became a global pandemic because while I don’t think people are coming back as Zombies but it’s interesting to see how the world even fictional adapted to epidemic. Let’s just say, I am not sure we are doing all that great but I digress. Jane and Katherine through the journey have to deal with some major PTSD other issues. They have seen and done some many terrible things to survive and that will do damage to the strongest person. What I love about this story is how they handle it and the importance of having a strong friendship to get your through it. Katherine saves Jane by just being supportive of her. Being there for her when she needs and taking a step back when she doesn’t. Proof that we can’t always do it alone. A lesson that Gideon could have learned. He was so sure of his own greatness that he was willing to let the world burn to get what he thought he deserved. Yeah, privilege rich white man destroys the world. I know I am not doing it justice with this review but this series is amazing and for all of you quarantined at home, I highly recommend it.