Recent Reads

I have always been a book first person (read the book first, rather than go to the movie) and now that we have three kids and less free time, I basically can only read books in lieu of seeing the movie.  Also, I generally prefer nonfiction to fiction, but recently I read two pieces of fiction that I enjoyed.  The first was World War Z by Max Brooks (son of comic genius Mel Brooks) and Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton.

You might think both of these are about zombie hordes, but really both stories are derived from oral histories.  World War Z of course is about humanities war against a terrible disease that turns exposed people to almost indestructible corpses.  A government official interviews survivors of the war and compiles their stories into a roughly chronological history of the war.  This is a good entertaining novel and has all of the elements of a thriller.  This includes Mr. Brooks' omission of really any information about how the disease came into being and the pathology of the disease.  I assume this omission was purposeful and does add an element of fear and suspense--sending the reader down a road of unknowns even as the book closes.

Eaters of the Dead is based on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.  For anyone who has read the poem it is a slog partly because most of us are not used to this type of prose and because it was written sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries.  Mr. Crichton does a great job of telling the story of Beowulf all while entertaining the reader, which generally does not happen while reading the original poem.

In Eaters of the Dead an Arab emissary is sent to the court of faraway ally.  During his travels he encounters some Northmen on the river Volga.  He is eventually conscripted by the Northmen and taken against his will as part of a party of warriors who are returning to the north country to rid it of an ancient evil.  This Arab recounts all of his adventures during a three-year period.  There was a movie made from this book called the 13th Warrior staring Antonio Banderas.  I have not seen it and probably won't see it because it is rated R.  Books are generally better than the movies anyway so not a big loss there.

These are good entertaining reads for someone who likes a little suspense and scare in his or her life.  Both books have substantial violence as well as language and sexuality so they are probably not suitable for young readers.