Currently Reading: World War Z

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Holy shit, this book has me hooked.  DT actually got it for himself, but I convinced him to let me read it first because I'm faster.  And this book is going particularly fast because I'm obsessed with it.  

I like zombies.  They're fine.  I watch The Walking Dead, constantly hoping that in turns into the great show that it could and should be (which might be finally happening).  But they're not my particular favorite supernatural creature.  I'd heard good things about this book and with Brad Pitt's upcoming film version, thought it would be worth a read.  It's so much better than that.  The book is so well-written and presented in such a realistic, terrifying way that I haven't been able to put it down.  Rather than a narrative, the book is written in the style of first-person recollections.  These stories come from military personnel, doctors, scientists, economists, and regular people who watched the disaster unfold in front of them.  They come from all over the world, so there is a big focus on the international level of what happened and how different countries reacted to it.  Basically, its like if Contagion had been about a zombie outbreak.

The zombie apocalypse isn't something that's usually on my radar, unlike the CDC's or DT's.  I'm not actively preparing for it.  But maybe I should be.  The book is scary.  Incredibly scary.  And not because of the gore or the miscellaneous body parts, but because its incredibly realistic.  That's where the novel's power lies.  They way that various governments act, not informing the public until its too late.  The media's role in simply shocking viewers to up their ratings rather than sharing true information that could save lives.  The military tactics that are a huge waste of time, money, and human lives that are mostly for show.  So effing scary.  

The zombies are horrifying in their own right, but its the human aspect that is truly haunting.  People turning against each other instead of coming together.  All the ugly sides of humanity are on the table here: greed, selfishness, racism, classicism.  There are good parts, and good people, but they feel few and far between.  The horror of the story isn't the zombies, but ourselves.