World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war

by Max Brooks
Hennepin County Library audiobook 10 discs
genre: zombie fiction
read by: a huge, amazing cast of people

This surprised me. I still really dislike zombie stuff - it's too creepy and gross. But the socio-economic, political commentary interwoven into the "eyewitness" interviews were fascinating. Brooks has created an intriguing tale. I'd love to talk to someone about the story . . . maybe I should get together with Sarah Rother!



Wow. I blogged this book exactly three years ago. That's almost creepy. I listened to the audiobook again because I remembered that I had been pleasantly surprised. I shouldn't make notes while I'm driving, but here are some of what I noted:

• culture, history, philosophy, psychology . . . I love how the author weaves so much into the narrative
• don't like: swearing, gross stuff, zombies in general
• universal health care in the U.S. - wouldn't that be nice!
• accents, voices, narrator (journalist) - love how "real" this seems
• chapter on U.S. and war weariness . . . costs of war in dollars and lives
• vaccine / big pharma / FDA underfunded / money and power - too real. Makes me sad.
• I'm an interesting mix of gullible and skeptical . . . one of the chapters talked about research done in the 1970s in Moscow. The scientist stood outside a door and waited. Soon enough, a line of people formed behind him, even though there was no point or purpose to the line. It sounded believable enough to me, so I googled it. I tried lots of different combinations of key words. This article is the closest I came up with.
• Darnell, dog handler - "used to hate dogs" ". . . dirty, smelly, slobbering germ bags that hump your legs." refused to pet them "oversize barking hamsters" (I waited until I was parked to hit the back button to re-listen and get the text.)
• dogs and dog handlers in the military - dogs as assets, not equipment. Made me think of Cracker, Best Dog in Vietnam!
• decimate - one of every ten (literally) not to completely wipe out
• South Africa / Redeker (?) Plan - actor too hard to hear and understand, even when I cranked the volume up.
• horrific, yet fascinating

I believe my initial listening was 2011. The above was added on 10.16.2014. Now it is 2.19.2020 and I've just finished my third listen-to of this book. I could finally hear a few of the quieter entries. One of these days I may actually read the physical book. But with all the amazing literature in the world, why oh why have I listened to a zombie book three times?

• Brooks is a talented storyteller.
• I spend a lot of time in my car and audiobooks help pass the time.
• This is an intriguing idea - post-Zombie war interviewing.
• It already seems very dated. Set in what seems to be the late 1990s or early 2000s, technology and society have changed a lot since this was written! (We have fewer and fewer survivors of the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, etc. . . . )
• Just googled it. Written in 2006, it was made into a movie in 2013. Extremely confident I wouldn't like the movie.