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What are you currently reading?
Jessidee:
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
CarrionMan:
--- Quote from: StreetSpirit on 26 Nov 2008, 11:10 ---I just finished re-reading Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger and am about to start The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
--- End quote ---
Franny and Zooey is such an excellent book. Kinda depressing until the end.
actreal:
--- Quote from: Nodaisho on 26 Nov 2008, 02:58 ---
--- Quote from: fozmo on 25 Nov 2008, 21:58 ---Flowery language and beautiful prose, deeper truths, whoopee. But will that save you when the zombies come? Didn't think so.
The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
Arm yourselves with knowledge... and a shotgun.
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I still need to read that. And then point out his mistakes every time someone brings it up as gospel, because I know there will be some, unless he is very well-studied when it comes to guns.
--- End quote ---
How can you have gospel about defending against a made-up enemy? Is there an accepted canon for zombies, or does the book cover survival against the various different imaginings of a zombie horde in pop culture?
Dimmukane:
There are two schools of thought, basically...the Romero school, which is largely what the Survival Guide is based on, although it pretends not to be; and the zombies who can basically perform physically like a human being, which aren't talked about.
The guide itself I think makes a few assumptions. Also, fozmo, if you were paying attention to the guide, shotguns are looked down upon for their potential to attract attention. And yeah, that's definitely a shortcoming of the Guide, it doesn't cover all the different types of zombies. In fact, it takes itself seriously when it's dismissing some of them as being too silly to exist.
I sometimes fear that the Guide is going to become something of a beacon to the Hot Topic crowd and then everyone will think they know what to do, and there'll be an Evil Dead 3 or something.
I don't know. I'm a huge zombie fan (don't question me on this) and I didn't find it all that great. You could basically chop it down to the weapons section and the bits about being stealthy and also buy a Boy Scout guidebook and you'd probably be better off. I just don't like how it takes itself so goddamn seriously. I know that's part of the humor of it, but I felt somehow cheapened after reading this, like reading all the other zombie comics and books and watching countless zombie movies was pointless because so many of them treated zombies differently. That's part of the appeal of zombies, is that the only set rules are that they have is to have died or been bitten first and that headshots are the most effective way to kill them (not even required, necessarily), and the rest is up to the people making the stories. Then this book comes along and demands that I forget all that.
I'm probably making too big a deal out of this.
Uber Ritter:
Just finished the superb World of Wonders* by Robertson Davies. It's the last of the Deptford Trilogy^ by Robertson Davies#, one of the most famous and internationally renowned Canadian writer of his day (mid-late 20th century, a generation before Margaret Atwood). To describe the general style, all three novels share a sort of Jungian magical-realism to greater and lesser degrees. I read the first, Fifth Business, my senior year in high school for English class (it made up for having to read The Grapes of Wrath and all of Preacher Casey's tedious sermons with it), and it's still my favorite. They all revolve around the consequences of one childhood friend throwing a snowball at another for the two friends through their lives and in their death, and for the child of the woman that the snowball actually hits. The same characters and motifs occur in many of the novels, such as Liesl, the ugliest and most alluring woman any of the characters ever meet, new names and new identities, and sundry other Jungian things.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Wonders
^http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deptford_Trilogy
#http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies
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