World War Z by Max Brooks

An oral history of the zombie war. World War Z is a series of interviews with survivors of a recent zombie near-apocalypse from all over the world. It's set in the reasonably near future, several years after zombies almost destroyed humanity.


This might be my favorite single book I've ever read. I've read it several times and it's definitely one I get more out of each reading. There are intricacies I failed to pick up on the first time around! It's supposed to be a sequel to the Zombie Survival Guide sort of, but it's totally different. I don't recommend the Zombie Survival Guide, it's not entertaining much it's just what it sounds like: suggestions on how to survive zombies!

Off Topic: Best Science Fiction, Fantasy Books?

NPR is currently running a poll on the best science fiction and fantasy books. Right now, you can comment here with five of your favorite books/ series to be later aggregated into an actual poll. Young adult, romance and horror are specifically excluded but apparently some types of zombies are ok.


Emma's list:

1. The Wheel of Time series by Jordan and Sanderson
2. A Song of Ice and Fire series by Martin
3. World War Z by Brooks (it's totally the virus kind)
4. Acts of Caine series by Stover
5. Coldfire series by Friedman

What are yours? I would love to see our followers' lists here after you vote! (Co-bloggers, feel free to edit this post and append your lists.)

Max Brooks is Super Awesome!

We don't normally do a whole lot of non-review posts here, but I definitely wanted to interrupt the normal reviewing to share this! I went to the Phoenix Comicon yesterday, and the highlight was definitely seeing Max Brooks, author of World War Z (excellent book, I highly recommend it), the Zombie Survival Guide and others. He was super awesome! Here is me looking demonic after having a book signed.


I bought a comic book of his called Recorded Attacks and had him sign it... he wrote "Mark Twain can suck it" because I told him he was my favorite author. That amuses me wayyyy too much! We also heard him talk later. He was so funny! He is really, really amusing to listen to. He didn't hesitate to make fun of fans who were asking really stupid questions. The worst was probably "what type of zombie would you NOT want to get attacked by?" He was fairly harsh and all kinds of hilarious talking at Comicon.

Other highlights of comicon included amazing Star Wars costumes, a picture with Wil Wheaton and cool booths selling nerd stuff. We are definitely going back next year with costumes!

Edit: check out this short story about vampires v. zombies by Max Brooks.