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Julia is Currently Reading

Julia rated a book 5 of 5 stars

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

by Max Brooks (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: science-fiction, best-book-i-read-in-2009, dystopian, reread, alternative-history, favorites, zombies, currently-reading

read in May, 2013

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Julia said: "My May 22,2013 thoughts
I like it when I reread a book I liked very much and I still like it. I spent nights, reading late into the night, even though I knew what was happening. I was very pleased to see that Howard Dean is the Vice President and Col...more My May 22,2013 thoughts
I like it when I reread a book I liked very much and I still like it. I spent nights, reading late into the night, even though I knew what was happening. I was very pleased to see that Howard Dean is the Vice President and Colin Powell was the President. I’d forgotten those details; they remain unnamed in the book, but it’s clear who they are. I think on my first reading, I cried during Todd Wainio’s description of the rout at the Battle of Yonkers, North Korea, apparently, dying en masse, and during Roy Elliot’s testimony. A Hollywood filmmaker, he restored hope to the survivors by filming successful battles. This time, I cried at the description of the elderly Queen Elizabeth, (also not named) again not leaving England, or even Windsor Castle, when it and England was threatened. The Russian priest, Father Sergei Ryzhkov, who had been a chaplain, tasked himself with killing bitten soldiers, so their officers didn't have to and they didn't have to kill themselves. Todd Wainio tells this story from ‘The Road to New York:’

“One night in Portland, ME, we were in Deering Oaks Park, policing piles of bleached bones that had been there since the Panic. Two grunts pick up these skulls and start doing a skit, the one from Free To Be You and Me, the two babies… A crowd started gathering, everyone laughing and howling at these two skulls. ‘Hi-Hi- I’m a baby—Well, what do you think I am, a loaf ‘a bread?’ And when it was over, everyone spontaneously burst into song, ‘There’s a land that I see…’” (326) A West German soldier Philip Adler says simply: “We lost a hell of a lot more than just people when we abandoned them to the dead. That’s all I’m going to say.” (339)(Bought in 2009 from SFBC for $1.99, read at that time.)

My May 28, 2009 review
I thought perhaps because Max Brooks is Mel Brooks’ son, that as well as a zombie book, this would be funny. No, he plays it very straight. This is an oral history of the first ten years of the Zombie War, in fact, it’s like he’s channeling Studs Terkel.

Governments lie, hide and allow terrible things to go on. An American drug company puts out the wrong drug because putting out the right one would cost money, a CIA analyst and an Israeli spy put together a report and the American government and most of the world hides it from the people. The Israelis immediately cease war with the Palestinians and seal their borders. A few lucky Europeans wall themselves up behind castle walls, an American filmmaker makes a movie of students fighting zombies and some people are less likely to commit suicide. And we hear about it all from the people: soldiers, a Japanese computer geek, a translator at Radio Free Earth, the first officer on a Chinese sub that escapes, the South Korean soldiers who notice that North Korea is no longer there, the Chinese doctor who first sees the zombie plague, the first cases in South Africa, and South Africa’s chilling response. The overriding theme is loss; he never says, but I bet ½ - 2/3 of the world’s population dies.(less)"

progress:

(page 4 of 6)
— May 26, 2009 04:44pm

26 minutes ago · see review

Julia is currently reading

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

by Max Brooks (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Julia rated a book 5 of 5 stars World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (Goodreads Author) read in May, 2013	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
My May 22,2013 thoughts I like it when I reread a book I liked very much and I still like it. I spent nights, reading late into the night, even though I knew what was happening. I was very pleased to see that Howard Dean is the Vice President and Col...more
26 minutes ago · see review
Julia is currently reading The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks (Goodreads Author)	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Julia liked Matthew's review of Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church: " I'm inclined to agree with previous reviews that advocate Ms. Drain waiting a few years to write this. Her intellectual and emotional growth are obviously, painfully stunted. It would be easier to feel sorry for her if her writing wasn't so drench... " Read more of this review »
May 21, 2013 02:03pm · see review

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Quotes Julia Likes

“Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.”
― Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

tags: hope

57 people liked it

“It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike--in the second place, folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

tags: austentation, decorum, knowledge, pretention

8 people liked it

“Miles was…the thing is, he was afflicted with a severe birth injury. He grew up pretty much crippled, so he poured all his frustrated energy into his intellect. Since the Vorkosigan family motto might as well be, Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving, the effect was pretty frightening. And it worked for him, so he did it some more.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

6 people liked it

“A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know--doesn't say much for them, does it?”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

tags: atticus, harper-lee, mob, mob-mentality, to-kill-a-mockingbird

11 people liked it

“She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. She persisted, and her subsequent reaction is something that all of us have known at one time or another. She did something every child has done-she tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolen contraband: she struck out at her victim-of necessity she must put him away from her-he must be removed from her presence, from this world. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

tags: guilt, institutions, society

14 people liked it

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