A Couple More Book Bloggers You Should Check Out

I haven't done a post about bloggers you should know in awhile so I was planning on doing a post this week.  Normally on Tuesday I would take part in the Top Ten Tuesday meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish but this week's topic is Top Ten Characters with Awful Names and while I usually don't make it to 10, this week I couldn't make it past one.  Rather than embarrass myself* I figured I'd skip the top ten and instead get around to listing other blogs that I think you should take a peek at.

Pens with Cojones - First and foremost, don't you just love that blog name?  Makes you jealous you didn't think of it first, doesn't it?  Mayowa is a literary writer that focuses on the literary world.  Every once in awhile he has a post reviewing a book but mostly the posts are about the writing industry.  The Case for Censorship and Literary Protectionism? and Writing Social Commentary: Do Words Still Have Power? are 2 of my favorite posts.

Entomology of a Bookworm - This is a book lovers blog.  There are some book reviews, some great book accessories, funny book-ish comics and web images, and general book topics. The site has a little bit of everything, which is great if you have blog ADD. (I have totally self-diagnosed myself so I have no idea if this is actually a better site if you do have ADD.  But really, only one way to know...)

*I embarrass myself all the time, so why stop now.  The only character name I could come up with is Renesmee which means, yes I have read the Twilight series.  (Stop judging me.) Meyers seems to have known that this was a stupid name since she has pretty much every character make fun of it.  

Who in his right mind could have been ready for this?

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks is a seriously scary book.  As I mentioned in my previous post, World War Z takes place more than a decade after the zombie war has finished, although the infected still have control of certain parts of the world.  It's not a single narrative but instead of collection of interviews and stories from survivors of the war as they look back on "the plague years".  And because this is a history that both the tellers and the presumed audience is already familiar with, the details aren't always spelled out and you, the actual reader, has to fill in the holes. Which means you spend lots of time filling in those uncertainties with your own scenarios and personally, I shouldn't let my mind wander like that.

As the book goes on you do get more and more details about the outbreak but the first two chapters, Warnings and Blame, are so unsettling.  There are few moments when something jumps out at you and they aren't the most gory scenes; these are the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night chapters.  And what's especially frightening is the realism.  The book takes place on the global scale, complete with the prejudices and fighting between countries. Early on Israel figures out what's going on and the country goes into voluntary quarantine, offering asylum to certain people, including "any Palestinian living in the formerly occupied territories, and any Palestinian whose family had once lived within the borders of Israel" (37).  Obviously there has been some Israeli-Palestinian disagreements for the last few millenia, so it's interesting to read the story from the point of view of a Palestinian man whose family goes to Israel for protection.  Anger and suspicion and fear fill his narrative; it's easy to see how the problem could grow so long without a global reaction.

This book is scary not just because of the zombies (although they aren't exactly pleasant)  but also because of how people react in a crisis; those who panic, those who help and those who look after self-interest only. There are all sorts that provide their voice to this "oral history", and many of the people cause just as much harm as the zombies.  Or at least they allow the problem to grow out of control.  There are stories from people on the organ black market, that sold infected organs and helped spread the disease across the globe, there are people who created placebo vaccines that did absolutely nothing to stop the virus but made the inventors lots of money.  This isn't to say the book paints a picture where everyone is evil and corrupt.  One character describes the awful things people did to one another and his description of the good vs. bad people exemplifies the tone of the book, so far anyway: "I'm just highlighting the most extreme negative examples, you understand.  For every one profiteer, or repulsive psychopath, there were ten good and decent people whose karma was still untainted" (72).  And the zombies are pretty terrifying as well.

I really want to check out the audio book version of this novel, but I'm also a little afraid to actually listen to it.  There's a story told by the point of view of a woman who lives in a rehab home for feral children.  She has the mind of a four year old and hearing a zombie attack from a child's point of view is terrifying, especially because she imitates not only the voices of the other people during the attack but of the zombie moaning, the pounding on the doors, the gun fire, the screams.  I fill in enough details in my head for this scene, I don't know how I'd react actually hearing it. 

Title quote from page 21

Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.  Three Rivers Press, New York.  2006.

Book Blog Hop XIV*

Another Friday (almost anyway), another blog hop, hosted by Crazy-For-Books.  The questions this week are: What are your feelings on losing followers? Have you ever stopped following a blog?

I'm sad when I lose followers.  There are questions asked: Wasn't I good enough for you?  What do you want from me?? But then I realized I'd rather have followers that actually want to read what I write instead of someone that started following me solely in the hopes that I would follow them back.  I know my blog isn't for everyone and that's fine.  

To answer the second question: yes I stop following blogs.  As I just said, I want people to follow me if they want to actually read what I write.  Keeping with that line of thinking, I only follow blogs if I like to read them.  When I first started blogging I would follow anyone that followed me.  Eventually my blog list was huge and I realized I wasn't really reading the majority of them.  Since then I only follow blogs if I like what I see, but sometimes I still end up with blogs that I'm not really engaged with.  So every once in awhile I'll go through the list and do some purging.  That doesn't mean the blogs I stop following are bad; it just means they aren't for me.  It's not you it's me, I'm setting you free, you'd be better with somebody else.**

Do you stop following blogs?  How do you decide what blogs to follow?

*Once I don't know the roman numerals anymore I'll switch to some new blog title for these.  

**There's a song called "Welcome to Dumpsville, Populate You" by the band Caustic Soda and it's now stuck in my head

It goes by many names: "The Crisis," "The Dark Years," "The Walking Plague"

If you were to ask me a year ago if I was a zombie fan I would have said no.  I suppose in reality if you ask me now I'll still say no.  Perhaps I'll elaborate and say I like zombies in the same way that I like pirates and ninjas.  The internet has decided these things are funny and they show up everywhere and eventually you get worn down and agree that yes, zombies, pirates and ninjas are awesome.  But even knowing the internet's power, the amount of zombie media I have consumed still confuses me.  Pirates can be pinned on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and as a child I grew up with the Ninja Turtles, so I at least have some background with these topics.  Completely fake, pop culture based backgrounds, but backgrounds nonetheless.  I've been trying to figure out how zombies got added to my own mix and here's a timeline I've come up with.

Pre-2004 - Zombie stuff happens but I don't care yet

2004 - Shaun of the Dead comes out

2006 - I actually get around to seeing this movie.  I think it's funny enough to eventually see Hot Fuzz but don't think too much more about it

2008 - during a job interview I'm conducting I get bored with the string of typical answers to typical questions and ask the interviewee "Zombies are attacking the city.  What's your first move?"  I decide the question elicites funny responses, either in the form of great answers or just confused looks, and I start using the question in other interviews and when meeting friends' significant others for the first time.  I find it's a good way to weed out people without a sense of humor.

2009 - Zombieland and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies both come out. Boyfriend and I decide to see Zombieland, most likely because there was nothing else we wanted to see.  I love it!  Boyfriend is (rightly) baffled by this.  A few months later I'm in my neighborhood bookstore and a women is buying a bunch of zombie books because the local theater is having a screening of Night of the Living Dead followed by a zombie expert answering questions and she's picking up door prizes. (Side note, I love both the local bookstore and the local theater.) She decides against P&P&Z and I ask the cashier to throw it on my pile.  The book is hilarious and the book title is exactly right.  It is primarily the text of Pride and Prejudice but anytime the story starts to have one too many dances, meals or carriage rides BAM zombies attack.  I have lots of conversations with people while reading the book in public.  The cover draws lots of interest.

2010 - Zombieland comes out on DVD and I buy it on release day.  Around this time Brother is looking for a book to read.  He's not exactly what you would call a reader, so I'm surprised to hear he's actually looking for something to read by choice.  He's looking for World War Z and says it's about zombies.  I tell him about my new found zombie appreciation and he lends it to me after he's read it.  Brother fails to mention World War Z is not a funny book.  Laughs at me when I tell him I didn't know it would be serious.  Brother can be a bit of a jerk.

So here I am now.  I've actually read WWZ once before I started this blog but I enjoyed it enough, and wanted to write about it enough, to start reading it again.  This book has shown me that my conscious and my subconscious really can't agree on anything.  My conscious isn't afraid of zombies.  When I'm awake I think they're funny because they're slow (usually) and stupid and not very scary.  Especially if you read the Cracked article about how a zombie apocalypse would fail.  But the first time I read this I had zombie nightmares many nights.  They wake me up, which really only serves to annoy me.  Unlike normal nightmares where you still feel the residual fear, even when you know there's nothing to be afraid of, I wake up from these dreams just annoyed that I'm awake.  I know I was just dreaming about zombies; when I close my eyes I can see them again.  But I don't have any of that fear.  Instead all I think is "It's 3 in the morning, I have to get up in a few hours, and I don't want these zombies waking me up anymore.  This is annoying."  Not only do I now have zombie nightmares while reading the book, but now that I've read WWZ, other zombie things give me the same unscary zombie nightmares.  My subconscious needs to get it together so I can enjoy my zombies but still get a full night's sleep.

I swear my next post will actually discuss the book. In the meantime, check out this list of zombie contingency plans from Cracked.com.  Mine most closely resembles the second one.  I will not survive a zombie apocalypse.  (I should get some credit or something from Cracked, seeing how I've mentioned them twice in this article alone.  They have a lot of zombie related articles.)

Title quote from page 1

Top 10 Books That Made Me Cry

Another Tuesday, another top 10 list hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Last week it was books that make you scream and this week it's books that make you cry.  I don't think I'll make it to 10 because I like to think I'm tough but I'm such baby I am a step above crying at long distance phone commercials.  So with that in mind here are the top however-many-I-make-it-to books that make me cry.  (Keep in mind that most of the time if a book made me cry it was something at the end that did it.  So there will probably be spoilers.)

1. Lamb by Christopher Moore. This is in my top 5 favorite books but the ending to it is so sad.  And it's not like I didn't know what was going to happen (spoiler: Josh gets crucified) but the book is so funny throughout the first half of it that the emotion in the second half of the book is surprising. 
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. I'm so glad I read the end of this book while I was at home instead of on the T because I'm pretty sure I would have caused a scene and then I would have had to make up some story about a severe allergic reaction or something to cover up the fact that a kids book made me cry.  Notable mentions in this category: Order of the Phoenix.  I didn't want to include multiple HP's on this list and I didn't bawl as much with this one, but that ending depressed me.  Especially after I'd gotten so attached.
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. This is such a powerful, tragic story. It is so sad with only a very small silver lining.  The story is fiction but so many real women live the hell that Mariam and Laila go through.  The book was hard to read and I probably won't be re-reading this one, but I'm glad I read it the first time.
4.  The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Morrison's work is so heavy but this was the first of her books I read and because of that it's the one that hits me the hardest.  Incestual child rape: fun for the whole family.  (I know that was awful and tasteless and I actually wrote it at first without realizing how bad it was but it also made me laugh out loud so it stays.  I have a 10 year old boys taste in humor.)

I tried to come up with more.  I even looked through my mostly-complete list of books I have and this is still all I could come up with.  I didn't want to go with books that made me just tear up a little bit; nothing I could explain away by saying I have dust in my eye.  If you decide to read any of these, fair warning. 

What books made you cry?

Update!: I realized I forgot The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and normally I'd just leave it off the list but since this book made me cry in public (dammit) I need to add it. Holocaust books will do that to you.

They faced each other through a fraction of eternity

I finished (well finished again) Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories, a collection of ghost stories compiled by Dahl.  I didn't actually read all of the stories in the second half.  There were a couple I tried to read and just kept putting the book down.  And then I remembered if I don't want to read it I don't have to so I moved onto the next one.  For the most part, Dahl picked out some great, creepy stories but we can't all have the same taste.  And there were a couple great ones in the second half such as the 3 stories below. 

"Ringing the Changes" by Robert Aikman

This is one of the longer stories in the collection and that time is taken to set the scene.  This is probably the most unsettling story because for the majority of the story you and the main characters, know something is wrong but you can't tell why.  People are behaving strangely but when you try to figure out what exactly is so strange you can easily come up with plausible, non-threatening explanations.  And the bells that are constantly ringing, so loudly the characters can hardly hear anything else.  The tension and the eerie feeling builds and builds until it finally comes to a scary culmination.  

**Spoilers**

The other thing I liked about this story is the fact that it's a turn of the century zombie story.  I though zombies were a more modern creation, at least in terms of making it into horror stories that don't take place in Haiti (thank you NatGeo Zombie Documentary).  These aren't the same brain-eating zombies but "the dead are awake" (139, emphasis mine).

**End Spoilers**

"The Ghost of a Hand" by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

This is the story to read late at night while you're alone.  There's a disembodied hand that is constantly knocking on doors, tapping on window panes, running its hand along the wall, perhaps to find a point of entrance.  The ghostly presence is more often heard than seen, which means every little sound made me jump.  I expected to see a fat white hand up against the window.  I think the best horror stories are the ones where you are so completely pulled into the story that you start to see it around you.  

"The Sweeper" by A.M. Burrage
Death takes on so many different forms throughout literature but the purpose is always the same.  I wish we could have seen more of the woman death was waiting for, Miss Ludgate.  She's a wealthy old woman described as "rich enough to be indifferent, but old enough to be crotchety" (162).  I wish we could have seen more of her but the story is told from a young woman who joins the household, mostly to keep Miss Ludgate company and to help with all of the beggars that stop by the property.  Miss Ludgate may be stingy with her money when it comes to the monthly bills, but she never turns away a beggar looking for a handout.  The story isn't particularly scary like the other 2 I mentioned.  Instead it's just a good story with interesting characters, told well.

The title quote comes from this story and I enjoy Burrage's style. This is the same author that wrote my favorite story from this collection, "Playmates", which I mentioned in myprevious post.

I feel like I started the whole reading-Halloween stories late, so I'll probably stick to this genre for a few more books. Especially if I happen to pick up The Haunting of Hill House sometime soon. And of course I think I'll re-read World War Z soon because I decided I've been sleeping too well recently and should probably break up the night with some ridiculous not-scary-when-I'm-awake nightmares.

Title quote from page 175.

Aikman, Robert. "Ringing the Changes." Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York. 1983.

Burrage, A. M. "The Sweeper." Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York. 1983.

Sheridan Le Fanu, J. "The Ghost of a Hand." Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York. 1983.