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This is a very well-written "survival" guide that allows a reader to learn about the "fictional" characters known as zombies while reflecting on their own ability to prepare for the catastropihc (both literal and metaphorical). It's also just a funny book to read if you like undead beings who wander around trying to kill you.
Max Brooks has done a great job of taking a Field Survival Guide and adapting it to a Zombie situation. Well written, a good read, and a bit of humor thrown in makes this a must have book of zombie enthusiasts.It also looks good up on the shelf with the rest of my field guides.Well done Max Brooks.
I've always been a big zombie fan, this just opened my eyes more and I ended up loving it, every single word. I didn't purchase it from Amazon but bought it in a bookstore and am reviewing it on here. A must have, amazing book.
I'm not always good at explaining why I like something, so I will keep this short and just say that I have TZSG:CPftLD, and LOVE it.For some reason I am sincerely terrified of zombies (I have nightmares every time I watch a zombie movie - I do that with no other kind of scary movie), and this book comforts me by making me giggle about them. I give it several thumbs up, and have given copies out to several of my friends. They each thought I was nuts at first, but every one of them ended up really liking it too.
It's kind of like a superhero having a loser sidekick and it just can't totally recover. He then goes on to craft a survival manual around those rules, which is really what makes it interesting. Still, a worthwhile read. The second part, however, really changed the tone of the book, was repetitive, and didn't mesh well with the rest of the book and is really what brought it down for me.
Of course, The Zombie Survival Guide won't help you if your plane goes down in the forest or your Jeep blows a tire on the African Savanna, but it will amuse the hell out of you for a few hours. I don't know why, but I guess it's the idea of human vs nature and coming out on top that attracts me to them. They don't run, they don't climb, they can't think. Obviously, this book is humorous (Zombies attacking, that's ridiculous)but it's much more an amusing, interesting funny than a laugh-out-loud funny.
Most of them read the same way and are just set in different locations. Brooks' zombies are the slow, shuffling, brainless zombies of classic horror movies and legend. But they also don't get hungry or tired, they don't breathe or feel negative effects from the environment, and this makes them the perfect hunter. At first, I thought, you know, they don't seem to scary. I enjoy survival guides.
I found myself really considering some of his strategies in the case of a possibly outbreak, and it's written with a certain severity and seriousness that occasionally makes you cringe, but in a good way, in a, wow, that guy has a really good point and it's kind of uncomfortable to think about, kind of way. If I was just grading this book on the survival guide, it would get a 5/5 without a doubt.However, it's really hampered by the last 60 pages or so, where Brooks goes into detail about all, or most, of the recorded outbreaks in history. For example:Location A 1400AD: Person bit, enters city looking for help, reanimates, kills part of population, locals blame it on mythology/legend/magicLocation B 1950AD: Person bit, enters city looking for help, reanimates, kills part of population, government comes in a covers it up or calls survivors crazy and it's all part of their imagination.The last 60 pages could easily have been trimmed down and I really feel like it was just an excuse for filler to make the book a little more substantial in terms of page numbers and word count, which could have been done with appendices, survival scenarios, and the like. The first part read extremely well, was interesting and surprisingly informative for a fictional account of a hypothetical zombie outbreak, and was a fun little brain teaser when you play "what would I do" with all the puzzle pieces Brooks supplies you with. Of course, Brooks' blew my survival plan out of the water, though, apparently a bicycle is an acceptable form of transportation during an outbreak so I'd be OK. Max Brooks does an awesome job at creating his Zombies and spends an entire chapter explaining their psychology and physiology. I spent the first few hours of reading wishing for more, and the last few wishing it would just hurry up and end.
You can out walk these things and if you have a bike then you're set. I found this book in the humor section of my bookstore but I'm not totally sure it belongs there. Some of the stories were entertaining, like the idea that Roanoke was the result of a zombie outbreak, but other than that, it was nothing special. You might just want to skim the last 60 pages.
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