After a week of continuous and interesting posting, I had to take a number of days away from regular life and book blogging because I was working to help proctor the Bar Exam — the test all lawyers must take before they can get their license. My mom works for the organization that proctors the test, so with my in I was paid $12 an hour to hand out tests, then silently prowl a room filled with 660 potential lawyers to prevent them from cheating. Needless to say, it was a long couple of days, and by the end of each one I was in no mood to sit around reading something serious or spend time blogging.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t get any reading done though. I stayed with Boyfriend, who happened to be reading a comic book series — The Walking Dead by writer Robert Kirkman and artists Charlie Adlard and Tony Moore — which he convinced me to start. After an extremely long day of walking around being serious and silent, an illustrated story about a group of people trying to survive on earth after a “zombie apocalypse” was exactly what I needed. I mean really, who doesn’t love the idea of a zombie apocalypse?
I got through the first two volumes, Days Gone Bye and Miles Behind Us, over the last few days, but don’t really plan to go out of my way to read any more; I think I’ll probably just read the plot summaries on Wikipedia and call it even. I don’t have much to say about them, other than that they are pretty mindless entertainment if that’s what you’re looking for. Boyfriend was constantly befuddled by the characters’ foolish choices (splitting up when hunting for zombies, assuming they are safe when clearly they aren’t), and I wasn’t particularly drawn into the story. We both agreed the storytelling needed some serious work. In the preface, the author says he was trying to write something new and different, but they felt pretty cliche to me, very much like what you expect a comic book to be about rather than a story that does something innovative or intriguing with the genre.
I hope I can get some reviews done in the next few days, I have three, I think, waiting on my shelf to be written, and then more time with my whole stack of new books. Awesome :)!
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Thanks for visiting me! One Foot in The Black is not a memoir. It is a work of fiction but a coming of age one!
I’m a huge zombie fan so Walking Dead was a must read for me – but I agree totally that the story isn’t all that original. The characters reminded me of people from old horror movies who always “go in the basement, attic, deserted house etc..” Predictable but a fun time-killer.
Hmm. I had a very different reaction to the comic. But I’ve read eight of the trades. But we can talk about that later, if you wanna.
Ben: That’s cool, I only read the two and stopped because I just wasn’t into them. They didn’t feel like they were doing a lot of interesting things, but of course I could have just been coming off Watchmen and it’s hard to compare anything to Watchmen. I’m curious to hear what you thought though!