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 More...

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 for this is that I want to enjoy the story through both mediums and if you read the book just before the movie, you've set yourself up to be a critic - analyzing everything and complaining about every detail that's inevitably left out, bu More...

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 More...

(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 More...

On the menu tonight: WORLD WAR Z

Amuse Bouche
Our 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.

Appetizer
A surprisingly hearty summer soup: tantalizing hints of summer flavors frozen solid, then slowly re-animated to surprise the un More...

At an impressionable age, I was traumatized by a double feature of “Evil Dead” and Romero's “Night of the Living Dead.” I was at a slumber party, so I couldn't very well go into another room and fall asleep, lest I wake up surrounding by clippings of my own hair and cuss words written on my face, backwards, so they would read forwards in the mirror. (Teen-aged girls man, worse than zombies.) So stuff about zombies is all shiny and sparkly for me, running with currents of terrifying electricity. More...

I have biblio-cooties.

There. I said it and I accept it. Because the majority of my friends really, really loved this book. And I fear they will reject me now that they know that it did little to nothing for me. I shall have to sit alone in the library, other readers keeping a wide berth for fear of contagion, but I cannot tell a lie and I stand by my pronouncement: Hi, my name is Amanda and I did not enjoy World War Z.

In the past, I have ripped into books I disliked with a gleeful, almost mania More...

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 More...

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 More...

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 More...

"This book is so good that you might even come back from the dead to read it. " The Zombie Weekly

"More satisfying than gnawing on your neighbours leg bone and meatier than the cast of "the Biggest Loser USA". " Moan Magazine

"A great insight for any living dead who want to out think the living er living" Corpse Chat

"I was so amazed by this i ate my own arm" Ghoul Housekeeping

"Settle back with some chips, crack open a skull for a bit of brain dip and enjoy world war z" ZQ Magazine More...

To everything there is a time - a time to reap and a time to plant, a time to listen to Schoenberg and a time to listen to Lady Ga-Ga, a time to read Marcel Proust and a time to read about zombie apocalypses. That time, for me, passed some years ago. I shouldn't've picked up this novel but I was seduced by shedloads of great reviews on this very site.
Although my copy has a front-cover blurb by Simon Pegg, it's his very own great little zom-romcom Shaun of the Dead, plus George Romero's splendi More...

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I did like this one surprisingly. I say surprisingly because this is ultimately a documentary of what happened in 'World War Z' and had great potential of being boring. I thought it was a nice change up in writing style. Considering the fact that all of these personal statements, made by different individuals involved, were conducted after the war was 'over' it didn't have the excitement or in the moment terror that I always love in a zombie novel. More...

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 More...

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 More...

This book is such a product of its times, it's laughable.
I have a soft spot for zombie wars that are laid out in realistic fashions. A prime example is the show 'The Walking Dead', one of my favorite television series of all time. I haven't quite figured out why I enjoy it so much. Perhaps it's because it's one of the few examples of warfare that doesn't suffer from misrepresentations of the fighting and the enemy, where violence is considered honorable and the enemy is demonized with little reg More...

This will be a short review and it will mostly be about my (imaginary) relationship with Alan Alda and my creepy stalker habits. I apologize in advance.

I've always wanted to marry Alan Alda. Not because I find him particularly attractive, but because I enjoy hearing him speak. The way I see it, if I was married to him, I’d be allowed to wake him up at all hours and make him read to me in that sweet, nasal voice and with that subtle but charming accent. Ok, so maybe my view of love and marriage i More...

this book. is brutally fantastic. i'm not sure if i've ever used that particular combination of descriptors before, but it fits. this is the same guy who wrote the "zombie survival guide," though i will have to rely on the husband to tell me how much of that manual informs this book, as he has been reading that one. both books were his christmas presents, btw, and i had no real mission to read either, but i started idly flipping through world war z out of boredom, and the next thing you know i h More...

I do not find the military or military command or structure very interesting, and this book is mostly about that, so it suffered for me from my inherent disinterest in the topic. I should have realized it was mostly about the military from the reviews I read and even from the title of the book, but I did not think that one through all the way. I listened to this on audio and it is possible that my standards were lowered by some really, really terrible audios I've listened to in the past couple o More...

This book is like ordering ice-cream and receiving a punch in the mouth.

I've been wanting to read this book for a while, since it seemed right up my alley; I love a good apocafic, and zombies are always fun. I made it to page 69 before putting it down with great force--I would have thrown it, except it was a library book.

This book is, as advertised, about the global zombie apocalypse as told by the survivors. You don't stay with a narrative voice very long; each one speaks to the 'interviewer', More...

Besides the odd Lovecraft, this is the first horror book I've read since tearing through dozens of Stephen King novels in high school.

I really wanted to like it, but the writer had a couple of ticks that drove me crazy. First of all, the CAs - constant acronyms. Nearly every page, there's an aside in which the character who's being interviewed tells us what an acronym means. It's the worst kind of exposition. If you were gathering a comprehensive oral history of the 00s, and you were talking to More...

The world was almost brought to complete destruction during what is later referred to as the Zombie War. Max Brooks fancies himself a survivor and takes it upon himself to travel the world and interview others. The book is in an interview layout, a rather interesting approach to this sort of book. The subtitle itself, An Oral History of the Zombie War, illustrates that it is and will only be in a Q&A format. This is simultaneously the book's greatest strength and its biggest weakness.

On one More...

Finished reading it and enjoyed it. Will write a full review later but some highlights:

Good:
1 - Totally didn't expect to like a "zombie" book but this author had a great take on that genre.
2 - I appreciated the detail and research that went into presenting this book from many different cultural and diverse locations
3 - Interesting style to present the "story" as a series of interviews - not an easy medium to do well but I liked the way this occured.

Bad:
A few things rung "untrue" for me - like th More...

An allegory for unchecked capitalism (it's no mistake that the walking dead first appear in China). And is it just me, or did the whole zombie genre take off during eight years of Republican (mis)rule of the United States? Some grad student should research that...

Initially I had thought World War Z was going to be a book I would be surreptitiously adding to my 'read' list, rating it and moving on to better reads quite unceremoniously.
I had considered not even the remotest possibility of reviewing it, because I assumed this was going to be one of those books one reads for sheer entertainment value and little else.
But here I am writing one anyway, because I think the author definitely deserves some praise for his powers of imagination, if not for the copi More...

My boss recommended this book to me, saying that it dealt with his two favorite subjects: international relations, and zombies. "Well," I said to myself, "I don't think there are very many books out there that can claim to do that." Obviously, I had to check it out.

My boss was right. Not only does this book merge the two topics, it does an exceedingly good job of it. Now, I'm a fan of all things apocalyptic, and I have a healthy appreciation for zombies. Still, I never expected a Zombie Apocalyp More...

I haven't seen every zombie movie or read every zombie book in existence, but I have watched enough to know the cliches of the genre. It was so refreshing to read a book that avoided so many of these conventions and covered some new ground. I mean, how many zombie stories span the entire world? How many cover the entire apocalypse, from Patient Zero to the aftermath/rebuilding? Aren't we all a little tired of zombie stories that closely follow a small group of survivors, as they get picked off o More...

I have fretted long and hard about what my choice for book club would be, when that time finally came. I wanted both to pick a piece of literature that would be surprising and that most others in the club would not have considered reading, but I also wanted it to be good. After all, I have spent the last few months reading the likes of The Kite Runner and Water for Elephants. If I can put up with that kind of sissy-pants literature (I am of course, joking. Partially.) then I wanted to make other More...

I admire the author for his extremely detailed perceptions of a future world recovering from a mass zombie plague, but I just couldn't finish this one. It is written like a case report, with each chapter functioning as a monologue/interview with people of various nations and occupations, all of whom lived through "World War Z." Because the author goes into such incredible detail about the political policies that are put into effect, the military strategies, medical procedures, pharmaceutical adv More...

Studs Terkel meets Dies the Fire. I was pleasantly surprised to find this a better example of fake sociology than horror. Perhaps its emotional impact is mitigated by the fact that everything is in indirect discourse--the storytellers are mediated by the narrator's presence, creating a one-step-removed framework. I kept waiting for a gut-wrenching story from a parent who had to stave in the skull of his/her reanimated child, but none was forthcoming. There was also little about zombie psychology More...