World War Z by Max Brooks

I finished reading my first book on an electronic device (the Kindle Fire I recently got as a hand-me-down from my son), Max Brooks’ World War Z.

My intention was to read the book before the Brad Pitt movie came out as I did not want the movie to ruin the book for me. However, I doubt the movie will have much to do with the book at all now that I have finished reading it. The book does not follow a single character like a movie traditionally does. Instead it is a compilation of fictional ‘interviews’ of survivors, many years following a world wide zombie apocalypse. At first this made it difficult to get into, but after a few chapters I realized I was getting many short stories instead of one long one… which turned out to be pretty cool. The dialog between interviewer and interviewee only added to the sense of an actual historical event.

Even if you are not into zombies, or even fiction, this book would still hold your interested. It brings up the ‘human’ side of things more than the ‘zombie’ side. How does a ex-Japanese soldier from WW2 compare WW2 with the Zombie war? How will a teacher lead his army? How does a young infantryman fight an enemy that does not know fear?  How did they feel when their government left everyone East of the Rockies to die?

While the book was not what I originally expected, I did enjoy it… and I enjoyed reading on the Kindle Fire enough to continue using it when I do not have a paperback in hand.