This book is the zombie apocalypse through the eyes of a zombie. “R”, as he calls himself because he can’t remember his pre-zombie name, lives in an abandoned airport with a lot of other zombies. He spends his days riding the airport automated walkway, eating humans, and listening to records in the airplane he has made into his home. One day he goes out to feed, and he sees a pretty girl that he feels like he has to save rather than eat. So he takes her back to his airplane home. Meanwhile, after eating his new captive’s boyfriend’s brain, he starts having trips through the boyfriend’s memories, and then R himself starts to develop more human-like qualities. Zombie boy falls in love with human girl, etc., etc.

I had a really hard time getting into this book. One of the major problems that I had with the book was that R is telling his story about how simple zombies are, that they don’t have complex thoughts, they have simple interactions with each other, they don’t remember their human pasts or human ways, and they basically just move around pointlessly like you would think a zombie would. But when R is supposedly explaining how simple he is, he’s doing it with pretty complex and thoughtful thoughts. I know this is a ridiculous issue to have with the book, and I don’t know why it bothered me so much. It’s not like the first couple of chapters could be all grunts and incomplete sentences. Who would read that? But if you’re going to have a zombie tell me in first person how simple he is, it’s kind of hard to get on board when his thoughts aren’t all that simple.

I also just really didn’t find the story that intriguing either. I was on a long flight recently, and the movie was one of the in-flight movie offerings. I watched about 15 minutes of the movie, which appeared to be a comedy. I did not realize that the book was a comedy. Maybe I would have appreciated it more if I had known it was supposed to be funny? I don’t know. It just didn’t click with me.

I went back and re-visited I Am America to see if maybe it was my imagination that I laughed so hard. Nope. Even randomly choosing pages I laughed again. Maybe it was because his subjects in the first book resonated with me at the time: family, religion, sex, homosexuals, race.  I loved his chapter on religion where he talked about all the different denominations, specifically:

Catholicism “..the One Church” “Catholics have saints – more than 10,000 of them.  They’re like God’s customer service reps, and each of them has a specialty. Say you lose your wallet. You could bother the Creator to help you find it, but if you’re a Catholic, you don’t have to. Just pray to St. Anthony. Finding lost things is all he does. For Eternity.”

“Quakers: These folks produced only two things I like – Oatmeal and Richard Nixon.”

So what IS it about America Again that I didn’t like? It continues to bother me.  There seem to be so many words! Mr. Colbert rambles on and on about the economy, jobs, elections. Maybe I’m tired of these current events? Maybe I’m getting old – the font is so small. In addition, on every page Mr. Colbert includes footnotes. Really? Footnotes written in red – I could hardly see it to read it!  Any book that takes this much work just isn’t worth it.

Maybe there is one moment when I chuckled? Of course:

“Tips for Serving a Life Sentence …of Fun!

 Make a name for yourself in the prison yard.  When all the other meatheads are grabbing the free weights, grab the oft-overlooked rhythmic gymnastic ribbon and put on a show that will rock everyone to their emotional core” 

The tips were funny but not enough.  Sorry Mr. Colbert, I wanted to love it, I really did!  In the end, though, you get the last laugh.  I actually paid money for your book – I didn’t check it out from the local library.

I believe that Gillian Flynn wrote Dark Places before she wrote Gone Girl. Like Gone Girl, Dark Places is full of lots of crazy. Like she must be a pretty twisted person to come up with this stuff kind of crazy. (Actually from her picture on the back of the book, she looks pretty normal. There’s no crazy creeping out of her eyes.) Like Gone Girl, Dark Places is a page turner. But, unlike Gone Girl, I don’t think the rest of the Dark Places was good enough to save the book from another flat ending. Sad panda. The ending could have been so much cooler.

Dark Places takes place in Middle of Nowhere, Kansas. As a Midwesterner who has recently returned to her Missouri homeland, I feel obligated to say that the Midwest is not full of crazies. But, alas, here we are back in the Midwest where Libby Day is the sole survivor of the Day family massacre. Libby’s brother, Ben, is convicted of the murders largely due to Libby’s testimony. Years and years after the murders, Libby is approached by a club that investigates old murders. The club doesn’t believe that Ben is responsible for the murders. They approach Libby to see if she’ll guest speak and answer questions at the next club meeting. Libby is kind of a loser and low on cash, so she agrees to go. Eventually, with the help of some more cash, they talk her into talking to other suspects, and she begins to start doubting Ben’s guilt and conducting her own investigation of sorts.

What I liked about Dark Places is that it is a fast read. The story is interesting, and you have no idea who Gillian wants you to think is responsible for the heinous crime (and it’s heinous, not for the faint of heart). Gillian also has a way of keeping you interested in the story even when the characters aren’t that likable. Spoiler alert as I talk about what I didn’t like. I didn’t like the ending at all, which means that I am about to talk about the ending. As I read the book I pictured so many different ending scenarios because I really had no idea where she was trying to take me. When I finally got to the whodunit, I was so disappointed because the endings in my head were so much cooler than the actual ending. The book was so good, and then it just left me with a “really, that’s it?” feeling. It could have had a Primal Fear-esque ending where you’re totally believing Ben didn’t do it, and then he turns out to be a Satan worshipping crazy the whole time. That would have been fun. The actual ending didn’t leave me shocked, or upset, or anything. It was just meh.

I like Gillian Flynn. She has a great writing style, but I want the end of her books to be worth the middle.

Publisher’s Weekly: Best Summer Books

Via The Millions: Are you a sufferer of the Mariko Aoki phenomenon?  It’s a thing.

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I am loving the new Harry Potter covers by Kazu Kibuishi (Amulet). Here’s the latest:

Only just watched last night’s Game of Thrones. All I can think is “Jesus, Grandpa, what did you read me this thing for?”

— erin morgenstern (@erinmorgenstern) June 3, 2013

George R.R. Martin explained himself to EW.

Spoilers ahoy: Boing Boing has a nice episode synopsis if you need to relive the episode with actually watching it again.

Someone found a way to laugh about it all at their local bookseller.

If you can still listen to that song, here’s The National’s cover of Rains of Castamere from last season.

In unrelated news, an Oxford professor drew gasps at the Hay Festival when he suggested that grammar pedants “relax.”

Book Time with Meg
Episode 33
The Expeditioners

[See post to listen to audio]

Top 34 horrible book covers

The most banned/challenged books of 2012

A brief history of American bookmobiles in pictures

BBC adapting Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell into mini-series

Infographic: Americans still love their libraries

Granta’s Best Young British Authors issue is out…check out the list

West Virginia introduces bill to include more science fiction in schools

Like the rest of us, publishers trying to figure out new common core standards

Worst English-language novelist in history?