What I Got:

• Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong
• Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater
• Word Origins and their Romantic Origins by Wilfred Funk
• The Manticore by Robert Davies
• Men, Ships, and the Sea (National Geographic) by Capt. Alan Villiers & other adventurers on the sea

What I Read:

• Only the Dead Know Burbank by Bradford Tatum (DNF)
• World War Z by Max Brooks
• One Piece, Vol. 1 by Eiichiro Oda & translated by Andy Nakatami and Lance Caselman
• Zone One by Colson Whitehead
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth (audio; reread) by Carrie Ryan
• The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks & illustrated by Ibraim Roberson
• The Maze Runner (reread) by James Dashner
• The Walking Dead, Vol. 1-4 by Robert Kirkman & illustrated by Tony Moore, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn

Well, I survived the weirdest Halloween I’ve ever had. But more on that later. First, books!

Usually for October I pick a spooky classic to read, like Frankenstein by Mary Shelley or Pet Sematary by Stephen King, but I decided to do something a little different this year and went with a theme instead: zombies! I already owned World War Z and Zone One, so the leap to a zombie-themed TBR wasn’t too far. (Though I can’t believe I didn’t think to put Pride & Prejudice & Zombies on the list!)

We’re going in chronological order this month, so grab your weapons and pull on your zombie-hunting boots, because it’s a jarring zigzag of a journey!

Only the Dead Know Burbank by Bradford Tatum (DNF)

We’re starting off on a low point—the first book I read this month was not good. I rarely leave a book once I’ve started it, but this book was killing my desire to read.

The rampant sexism and ableism built up more and more until I reached my breaking point: “ululating nipples.” Yes, that’s right, this is an actual phrase used by a published author to describe the female anatomy.

The main character is classic “female character written by a cishet man who is living out a fantasy rather than actually creating real characters.” Bradford Tatum’s passion for classic horror cinema was not enough to overlook his obvious lack of knowledge about women and female anatomy. I mean, he described sex workers’ pubic hair as being shaved into different currency symbols. Who does that?

Even without these issues, this book wouldn’t have impressed me. The writing was lackluster and leaned too heavily on niche knowledge of classic horror films.

The one thing I did like about this book is that the main character’s undeadness had interesting effects on the plot. Two men took advantage of her ability to never die and feel no pain in order to basically create a freakshow without the circus. And her inability to sleep ends up aiding her film directing career. Honestly, though, I would have been more interested in reading about her mother, who was the one who did the ritual to make her undead in the first place during the Spanish Flu.

The target demographic for this book does not include me, and even if it did, I would steer clear of this one.

World War Z by Max Brooks

Just when I thought I was heading face-first into a reading slump, this book brought my reading back to life!

World War Z was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t think it was going to be bad by any means, but it really surpassed all expectations. Where Bradford Tatum’s writing was masturbatory and basic, Max Brooks’s is self-aware and intricate. The oral history format is hard to pull off, but Brooks executes it beautifully.

A few years on from when zombies overran the world, the “interviewer” goes on a mission to take down people’s personal stories before they’re forgotten.

The narrative is so wide-reaching and exhaustive, discussing things about a zombie war/infestation that I never would have thought of—religious repercussions both personal and community-wide, people who take advantage of disaster situations for personal gain, feral children and animals, new mental illnesses, etc. The interviewer goes all over the world to interview people who were involved in the war—not just different countries and regions, but different climates, under the sea, in isolation in the wilderness, even at the International Space Station. If this were a real piece of journalism, I would be impressed by the interviewer’s thoroughness. 

It’s clear that Max Brooks took the time and effort to do research and speak to people different than himself. The author seems to include bigotry, fanaticism, or general assholery to give a more comprehensive view of humanity in crisis rather than using fiction as an excuse to be hateful. Without this, I wouldn’t believe the story, even if it’s not fun to read. The zombie plague doesn’t eradicate racism or homophobia or colonialism or corporate greed; it just changes how these things manifest.

The biggest problem I have with this book is that interviewees’ POVs are rarely repeated. Only a couple have more than one interview section throughout the book until the last chapter called “Good-Byes”. I ended up forgetting names easily because of this, and when they showed up later in other people’s stories or as interviewees, I had to flip back and forth. In order to get the full experience, I think I would need to reread this book at least once more. (And you know what? I might just do that.)

Nonetheless, all the interviewees sounded like real people—and sounded different from each other—which is hard to do with just a couple POVs, let alone dozens.

I am a big fan of the whole meta-media thing where creators pretend that their fiction is a real piece of journalism or documentation. This book includes an “Introduction” describing the circumstances of the collection of these interviews much like a nonfiction book would. Plus, I love a good footnote, and the organization of interviews into themed sections made the narrative more cohesive. 

Damn, who knew a zombie book could be so cool? Not me, that’s for sure!

One Piece, Vol. 1 by Eiichiro Oda & translated by Andy Nakatami and Lance Caselman

This is the only book I read that didn’t include zombies, but it did include pirates, so I still call that a win!

This manga series was hyped up a lot in the booktube community, so I went in expecting to become an immediate fan of these characters. The characters are funny and the story is interesting, but nothing really hooked me as much as I wanted it to. The illustrations are sometimes too busy to be readable, but it didn’t hinder my understanding of the plot much. I’ll probably continue reading the series to see if it gets better (and because I like a good pirate story), but for now, I’m taking a pause.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

As expected with Colson Whitehead, this is an introspective zombie book. It moves a little slowly, but Whitehead has an ability to choose exactly the right diction. Even if I had to look up a lot of word definitions… The descriptions are visceral, especially when describing the sounds and sights of the zombies’ bodies. 

This story follows Mark Spitz (a nickname, not the actual Olympic swimmer), who is a self-confessed mediocre guy in an extraordinary world. He is part of one of a few teams who are part of a campaign to “clean up” NYC after the military got rid of the larger number of zombies. Post-zombie gentrification.

Unfortunately, the plot dragged at times. This is just the nature of a novel that takes place over only three days and involves more recollections and thoughts than action and excitement. 

This story is not quite hopeful, but it’s not quite hopeless. Somewhere in the middle. This is a world in which detachment from reality and an ability to not care too much are assets. 

Whitehead creates a great satire of our current society by using this zombie plague to discuss mental illness and the wellness industry (PASD—post-apocalyptic stress disorder); corporate sponsorships of the human race’s survival (including alcohol and other unnecessary indulgences); everything becoming an act and everywhere a stage (large-scale public relations that trick those involved as well as those who are watching); and how fitting in and skating by in life can be a defense mechanism (Mark Spitz’s talent for flying under the radar). 

Zone One and WWZ both discuss a lot of the same themes and issues, but while the latter is wide-reaching, the former is narrow. Whitehead uses one man’s experience over just a few days to explain how an entire society responded to disaster. And it’s surprisingly effective. (Well, maybe not so surprising, because Colson Whitehead is super talented.)

While this book wasn’t a roaring success for me, it by no means put me off of reading more of Whitehead’s work. In fact, the writing quality just made me more excited to tackle more of his backlist.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth (audio; reread) by Carrie Ryan

As I was thinking about zombie books I’ve read in the past, I remembered a book I’d previously forgotten: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. In fact, I’m fairly sure I read the whole trilogy in high school. So when I saw that I could get it from the library as an audiobook, I figured I would listen to it again, because I remembered enjoying it.

Mary lives in a society ruled by the Sisterhood and surrounded by a fence that keeps out the “Unconsecrated” (zombies). After her mother dies and she’s forced to join the Sisterhood, she learns that her town has tons of secrets. And even though it takes over a third of the book for this to happen, she and a few others do eventually journey into the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Though I wish a few of them had stayed behind.

The love interest, Travis, annoyed me to no end. His need to be Mary’s only dream is annoying and narcissistic. You can want and need each other without one person relying on the other for safety. Even if you don’t need each other practically or if she has another dream (one that she’s carried forever, might I add) doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you or need you. And even if she doesn’t need you, she’s choosing you every moment, and isn’t that better? Not to Travis.

Listening to this story again made me realize that my love for the “storytelling as survival” theme started early. Mary’s mother passed down stories of the world before the Unconsecrated, and when Mary later finds proof of this world, she passes it down to a child they’re traveling with to give him hope and strength. Plus, there’s a puppy. Who doesn’t love a puppy?

Most of my enjoyment came from the nostalgia of rereading this book, and even though it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, it’s definitely no masterpiece. But it’s still a good story!

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks & illustrated by Ibraim Roberson

I’ll be short and sweet with this one as it’s mostly just an add-on to WWZ. It added a history to the existence of zombies, which is something I didn’t see in any other book. It tells stories of zombies in different cultures and time periods. The background was interesting and definitely enriched this story’s world.

I also tried to read The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, but I got bored. It was too technical and focused on weaponry to keep my attention from the beginning. This could be the result of oversaturating my reading life with zombie books all at once, so I might pick this up in the future for a little bit of fun.

The Maze Runner (reread) by James Dashner

This is the book that inspired my zombie TBR. I loved The Maze Runner trilogy so much that it was my go-to answer for “what’s your favorite book?” for a good year or two in early high school. (Don’t get me started on the movie adaptation, though. I wrote a scathing review of it for my high school’s newspaper.)

This reread was similar to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, except more disappointing because I had higher expectations.

In The Maze Runner, Thomas wakes up with no memories in a place called the Glade, surrounded by a shifting Maze full of monsters called Grievers. He’s introduced to a mostly self-sufficient community of teenage boys who have been searching for a way out for the past two years. The day after he arrives, the first girl of the Glade arrives and everything starts to fall apart from there.

The “genius kids” theme must have reeled me in, having been successful in previous reads like The Mysterious Benedict Society, and the compelling idea behind the story made the first read so much more interesting. Who thinks of a society of teenage boys surrounded by a Maze full of squishy robot monsters? It’s strange, and it makes the reader want to keep going just to see how everything turns out and is explained. But now that I already know what’s going on and don’t have to figure it out along with the characters, I started to notice other things about the book.

The writing itself was just not as good as I remember. So much is repeated in short periods of time. He’ll say something about Thomas being upset about his lost memories and then a couple pages later will repeat the same sentiment almost exactly. The descriptions of the Grievers are very illustrative, but it was hard for me to picture the Glade and the Maze at all, let alone the characters.

I still enjoyed this book, of course, but I’m sad to say that it’s no longer a favorite.

The Walking Dead, Vol. 1-4 by Robert Kirkman & illustrated by Tony Moore, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn

And the journey comes to rest on another low point. I technically didn’t finish the physical book I was reading, which was Compendium 1 (Vol. 1­–8) of The Walking Dead series, so my month was bookended with DNFs. Spooky.

The biggest reason this book failed to captivate me is that I couldn’t stand Rick Grimes, the main character. He’s a sexist egotist and the walking stereotype of a Midwestern cop. Most of it is Rick talking (blowing smoke up his ass, really) or doing whatever he wants “for the good of the community,” and the community itself is intensely male-dominated.

Unlike WWZ and Zone One, the bigotry in this book is not fully self-aware. Robert Kirkman’s take on zombies is really only unique in that everyone is infected with the plague, the bite just being the catalyst for a death and return, rather than the point of infection. Maybe if I’d watched the show, I would be more interested, but the comics just felt lackluster.

I’ll give props to the illustrators, though, because the illustrations are phenomenal. They’re gory without putting me off and detailed enough to add to the story despite the incredible amount of spoken text.

The one thing this book did give me is a weird Halloween experience. I got locked in a cemetery in the dark. Yes, that’s right, locked in.

To try to get myself more into The Walking Dead, I thought it would be cool to go read in a cemetery and get some pictures for my bookstagram. Before I left, I discovered a friendly cat in my apartment building’s hallway. I knocked on doors; no one answered. I left in the hopes that by the time I was back, the owners would have retrieved their pet. This was the first sign that my outing was not going to go as expected.

I arrived at Wyuka Cemetery around 6:45. The sign said the grounds closed at 8. I had plenty of time.

For the record, Wyuka isn’t a super spooky cemetery. It’s basically like a park; it’s beautiful and fun to walk around on the paths. I’ve spent many an afternoon or evening there with a book. Why should this be any different?

At first, all was fairly normal. I did see some people in fancy costumes that were clearly doing some sort of photo op, but that was the only odd thing. I wandered around and got some pictures before finding a tree to sit under and read. It got dark pretty fast, so I tried to read by flashlight for a little while. I quickly gave up; every noise distracted me and I wanted to go home and take a shower.

By 7:15, I was in my car and ready to leave. I pull up to the entrance and stop short… The gate was already closed! Almost an hour early. Did they not see my car in the parking lot before closing up?

I called security to come open the gate and was on my way by 7:30 without any encounters with the undead. But, boy, was my heart pounding. Getting trapped inside a cemetery is the spookiest Halloween experience I’ve ever had.  

Anyway, we all survived Spoopy Month! And none of us (hopefully) had to spend the night in a cemetery! I’m ready for some consistent fall weather even though I’m dreading the incoming seasonal depression looming on the horizon. I’ll try to keep my spirits up with hot chocolate, flannels, and cozy reading nights. I hope you have something to keep your spirits up (or at least not down) during the cold seasons. And I hope no one encounters a zombie any time soon.