World War Z

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
People have been suggesting this book to me for years. Zombies have never been my favorite (fictional?) supernatural character, and I'll still pick vampires over zombies in any fight for my time and attention. BUT -- WORLD WAR Z has now turned out to be one of my favorite books of all time.

Max Brooks is a remarkable writer. He has created a vision of such a complete world, with a history all its own that feels incredibly real. His imagining of a zombie apocalypse is pretty darn terrifying, but with the choices he made in structuring this book he made the work even harder for himself.

By using the brilliant format of "Studs Terkel-style" oral histories to tell the global story of the Great Panic, the Zombie War, and its aftermath, Brooks had to create an international palette of characters who could relay their incredibly realistic-feeling personal experiences and tell the complete story. I can't imagine how much research he must have done in order to create these characters and their varied perspectives shaped by everything from apartheid-era South Africa to the villages of rural China to Castro's Cuba to the declining Russian empire. I was really astounded at how vividly he wrote these characters, and how their backstories helped illuminate the larger story of WORLD WAR Z.

Now I can't wait to read the Zombie Survival Guide so I can prepare for myself!


View all my reviews.

The Mysterious Men of LOST

Okay, friends, I'm back for a full post on all kinds of crunchy LOST goodness, as I just finished watching episode 5.3: Jughead.

***SPOILERS ABOUND -- Consider yourself warned***

First, I thought you all might find it amusing (and I just wanted a good excuse to use my new scanner) to see how I watch an episode of LOST. I take notes! For example:

(Look closely, you can see where I exclaim "future Des is hot!" Excuse the tense there, cuz "future" in this case really means "present," but you get my drift. He looks GOOD.)

There was a whole lot of stuff going on in this episode, and I think it really boiled down to fleshing out the stories of 3 of the more mysterious characters of LOST. While they may have been on the sidelines or be brand new, these 3 are shaping up to be very central to the resolution of the story. And, in typical LOST fashion, for every new tidbit we learned we have a whole slew of new questions.

Daniel Faraday
Well, he just gets more and more interesting, doesn't he? And Jeremy Davies freakin' rocks in the role. So Faraday's been studying this time travel stuff for roughly a decade, funded by none other than Charles Widmore (see below - all these stories are gonna link back to each other like they do). He started with rats like Eloise, but apparently moved on to sending a poor cute British girl back and forth in time, or at least in her mind, and now she's frozen in that loop and has all her medical bills funded by... none other than Charles Widmore. Seems like Daniel may have had a thing for the girl, too, which makes his on-Island crush on Charlotte, who now also seems to be suffering from the time travel side effects (Rousseau's sickness???), even more poignant. Whatever happened, it was bad enough that Oxford has stricken all record of him ever being a professor there and his old lab is sealed up.

What was his original connection to Widmore? Did Widmore look him up in the yellow pages under "brilliant but slightly crazy physicist willing to explore possibility of time travel in pursuit of mysterious time-hopping Pacific Island" ? Perhaps.

And, though we haven't seen it on screen yet, we pretty much got the big hint that Mrs. Hawking will turn out to be Daniel's mother, who - according to Widmore - is a "very private person." Intriguing!

Richard Alpert
Hooray for Nestor Carbonell's show getting cancelled last year so he can be back with us more regularly! Richard has been one of my favorite side characters since he was introduced, and I'm glad they're starting to give us more details. Tonight, they confirmed that Richard is very old, and he's been on that Island a very, very long time. Could he be somehow connected to the presumed "ancients" that built the 4-toed statue? Are the Others speaking Latin because that was Richard's language? I'd love to find out he was maybe the priest of the Black Rock or something - speaking Latin by trade, not because he's actually 2000 years old - a few hundred years sounds better. :-)

The other (Other?) big thing we learned tonight a little Island history: as of 1952, when Richard seemed to be the leader of the Others, Dharma has not yet arrived; the Army had come to the Island to do an H-bomb test but the Others killed all of the soldiers; Richard was following Jacob somehow; and - most importantly - Richard had NOT started time traveling yet. He didn't know John, and he didn't seem to believe his story. Does this mean time travel didn't start on the Island until during the Dharma years?? That could fit with the original orientation film and its reference to "the Incident."

But, what John said resonated with Richard enough for him to follow his instructions and seek out the young Locke as we've seen him do before. In those previous scenes, I'd thought Richard was time traveling and that's how he never aged. But, now I'm changing tack and thinking that Richard still wasn't time traveling yet -- that at least in the beginning he is just traveling off the Island some normal way to track down and visit Locke -- and that he doesn't age because Richard is, somehow, immortal. Or close to it. He did make an interesting reference to choosing the leaders of the Others in a very specific way - which I'm sure we saw part of back when Richard visited young Locke and gave him the "Dalai Lama/reincarnation" test that I loved so much. We still don't know why young Locke was drawing pictures of the smoke monster, though.

Charles Widmore
Well, we had a big reveal tonight! Not only did we get a tasty confrontation scene between Des and Charles Widmore circa 2008 (I think that's the present storyline, right?), but we learned that... drum roll.... young Charles Widmore was once an Other!!! There he was, the eager young foot soldier trying to shoot John Locke. How did he get there? Was Widmore born on the Island, an actual Other? Or will we learn he somehow came to the Island as a young man? Either way, he did something just like Ben did to get himself banished from the Island and unable to find it again, and he still really wants to find his way back. That must be why he was funding Faraday.

Come to think of it, now that Desmond and Faraday have had so many ties, I'm even more sure that Widmore set up that sailing race around the world specifically to put Desmond on a boat headed toward that Island. Could Faraday have told his benefactor about his strange visitor at Oxford talking about the Island???

I still can't figure out who's really the "good guy" if there is one in all of this. Should we be rooting for Ben and the Oceanic 6? Or for Locke and the Others with their Island traditions? Or Widmore with all of his resources trying to find his way back? And how does Richard fit, having known and aligned himself with both Widmore and Ben over the years? Time will tell -- but I did really appreciate Widmore's warning to Des to keep Penny safe. Widmore knows Ben Linus, and he knows Penny is in extreme danger if he ever tracks her down. It's too bad Des didn't heed that advice. But then again, this story will fuel another 2 seasons of LOST!

More tidbits:

* Des and Penny's supercute little boy is named Charlie!

* Juliet must be a very quick study - she wasn't on the Island very long, comparatively, and she can speak Latin fluently? Yeah, 3 years of it in high school and I couldn't pick up a thing.

* I still really like both Miles and Charlotte and can't wait for them to get fleshed out a bit more. I have faith Charlotte will be back, in some form or another, cuz she must have some juicy Island backstory to tell. (Side note: Although I loved Veronica Mars, I am actually really glad Kristen Bell turned down this part on LOST and went on stupid Heroes instead. Charlotte just wouldn't work as an enigma with such a known actress playing her.)

* I think I'm enjoying the Island storyline a little more than the real world/Oceanic 6 storyline right now. That may be just cuz of which characters are where -- and Kate and Jack will never be in my favorite storyline. I did miss the presence of Ben Linus tonight, but I loved the chance to spend more time with the very interesting group still on the Island.

* And, oh yeah, I loved that there was a commercial for Nathan Fillion's show. I know he has a tendency to fill his career with equal parts crap to his share of genius material, but he's so darn tasty I'll watch anyway.

Okay - I think I've said enough. What did all my fellow LOSTies think???

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Required Reading. Any fellow fans of LOST, or of tv in general, really should be reading tv critic Alan Sepinwall's blog - especially his fantastic post about tonight's episode.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

You betcha, boys and girls, it's Oscar time!

That means it's time for the annual Stef's Blog Oscar Pool. Woohoo!

Here are all the nominees. Study up, and spend some time at the multiplex. I've still got several on the list to see and I have no idea what my picks are yet!

To play, pick the one winner for each category (I just need the name of the movie and/or person winning - don't need all the other info) and drop 'em in an email. Also be sure to answer the 3 tie-breaking questions:

1. Which movie will win the most awards total?

2. How many awards will that top movie win?

3. What time, without going over, will the telecast finally end? (Eastern time, por favor)

Bonus question: Will Hugh Jackman rock or suck?

Submit your entries to me at:

Stefsoscarpool AT yahoo DOT com

by 5 pm on Sunday, February 22 to play. Remember, you've got to play to win. And you will WIN something.

(Photo from the official Oscars site.)

LOST and Loving It

It's baa-aaa-aaa--aaaack!

With a three-hour extravaganza tonight, featuring a clip show followed by 5.1 "Because You Left" AND 5.2 "The Lie," Lost has come back in full force.

I'm tired and it's been a long day, so I'm not gonna do a usual post -- starting next week, though, the show will end at 10 pm and I should have plenty of juice left to do my traditional verbose Lost blogging.

Suffice it to say for tonight, I love the way they're handling the time travel, I love the intrigue and alliances among the Oceanic 6, I love the possibilities of all the old mysteries they could uncover with the new "unstuck in time" device, I love Mr. (Cheech) and Mrs. Reyes, I love my (and Alli's) new theory about the whispers, I love Mrs. Hawking, I love Hurley and Sayid and Daniel and Miles and Desmond and Juliet and Sun and Locke and Ben and, of course, Sawyer.

I'll probably even rewatch this weekend just to keep up with all the blogs. What did you all think?

Special Guest Movie Review

I hope he doesn't mind -- but I just got this email from my brother, which he sent to both my Mom and me, and I thought it was such a strong endorsement that it deserved to be shared:

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The Wrestler was really good. I know neither of you want to see it, but it truly was a good and suprisingly funny movie. Mom's take of Mickey Rourke being a "Greaseball" or "Scumbag" adds to the movie. At times you couldn't tell the where the character ends and where the actor begins and vice versa. I think that is the brillance of the casting making it all the more believable. Just like Robert Downey Jr. in Ironman as an alcoholic, egomaniacal, pill popper (all of which he is) no one is truly believable unless they believe that they have those things in themselves. At the very least it is worth the matinee price to see the previews that accompany the movie, all of which blew me away particularly "Waltz with Bashir" and Benicio del Toro as "Che". All in all, it is a movie worth renting, remembering that Rourke is greatly talented and strangely charming, and that even "Greaseball scumbags" can be good people too.

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I do plan to see this movie, and had it in my Netflix queue even before my bro's two thumbs up. I'm so far behind on this crop of awards season movies, though, I have a lot of catching up to do!

The Countdown Is Over

Now let the governing - and the real opportunities for change - begin.

(Photos from The Washington Post.)

Culture Roundup

It's been a very busy couple of weeks, so I apologize for being so quiet on the blog. But have no fear, I've still been a cultural consumer! Here's a quick roundup of the last week or so:

I finally made my way to the Corcoran Gallery of Art for the first time (I know, shameful! I've lived here almost 7 years!) to see the Richard Avedon show, Portraits of Power. This is a great exhibit and it's only open until January 25, so I hope folks out there go see it soon! It's a collection of Avedon's photographic portraits of people of power and influence in many different spheres -- everyone from politicians to artists to activists to policymakers to the Dalai Lama -- shot over the course of several decades before Avedon's death in 2004. What I loved about this show was the sense of biography, both of our culture and of many of his individual subjects. There were a handful of people that Avedon photographed several times over the course of their lives, and it was fascinating seeing the way they had changed. And, what I really loved was picking out so many of his well-known subjects that he'd photographed in the 70's or 80's, and were labelled according to their positions then, and remarking upon how their lives changed after the photo was taken. For example, he happened to photograph a young State Senator from Illinois after he gave his keynote speech at the DNC in 2004, shortly before Avedon's death. We all know what has become of that particular rising star!


I enjoyed a long Sunday afternoon of playing Ticket to Ride with these two gamers. I think I'm finally getting the hang of this good beginner-level strategy game, affectionately called TRAINS by everyone I know, where you have to build train routes between stations in a way to earn the most points possible. We started with a round of the US version of the game before moving on to the European version which is so much harder! I'm guessing the European version is harder for us Americans mostly because we do not have the same inherent knowledge of the map of Europe -- and I hope Europeans have a harder time playing the US version for the same reason! -- but the Europe edition does change the rules a bit to make the strategy of the game a lot more challenging. I learned the hard way that tunnels SUCK and lost 3 turns trying to build a short tunnel in Spain. Bah! But I'm still really loving this game and can't wait to play either version again soon!


Then, our book club met on Tuesday night to discuss Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader. While this was not my favorite book ever, we did have a good discussion and all agreed that Ms. Barry's novel did not deserve the call out as Entertainment Weekly's #2 worst book of 2008! This tells the story of a young woman returning to her home of Salem, Massachusetts to revisit family secrets, and it's a family in which the women have passed town the tradition of both making and "reading" lace. Like reading tea leaves, lace reading gives these women the ability to see or sense the future. I loved the setting, which was very true to what I remembered from visiting the funky, interesting, quaint and mysterious town of Salem about 10 years ago, and the novel has some quirky characters who make the story more compelling. The author's writing style, however, and the narrator's own voice can be off-putting, so I sometimes felt I kept reading the story in spite of not really liking the main character or how she was telling it. But, it's a very fast read and the setting and atmosphere pull you in enough that it's worth picking up a (paperback) copy if you like small-town mystery/psychological thriller stories.

Spending the Weekend with Laura and George

I have spent the last 48 hours fascinated by the lives of Laura and George Bush. Well, not really their lives, but fictional versions of their lives -- as imagined by Curtis Sittenfeld in her latest bestseller American Wife.

If I wasn't already a huge fan of Sittenfeld through her earlier books, Prep and The Man of My Dreams, I probably would not have chosen to read this one. I mean, really, the life of Laura Bush and the ups and downs of her marriage to W? That doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy, because what is there that we don't already know from years and years of bio pieces and from our own opinions of the pair? Well, this book is proof of what a really good fiction writer can do -- she can take a familiar story and make it seem new, even turn it into a page-turner where you're actually wondering what will happen next even if you already know.

This is a work of fiction, loosely based on the story of the Bushes but with a great deal of their personal and inner lives imagined by Sittenfeld. The "American Wife" is Alice Lindgren, a quiet, reserved Democratic-leaning librarian from small-town Wisconsin who marries Charlie Blackwell, the charismatic but somewhat layabout scion of an elite Republican dynasty. Some of the familiar highlights of the Bushes' story are in here -- the tragic car accident, the alcoholism, the domineering mother-in-law, the baseball team, the Karl Rove-like advisor, the Presidency -- but the author takes some license in developing Alice's early years to flesh out a character who seems fuller than what any of us know about the real Mrs. Bush.

From this framework of history and biography, Sittenfeld builds a story of two very human characters and their very realistic marriage, all told from Alice's perspective. American Wife draws in the reader and raises questions about what one person's rights are in making decisions for a couple, and what one's responsibilities are for living out your beliefs. But I think Sittenfeld's biggest triumph is in making this story seem so authentic. While the characters and story are so familiar, it's easy to get so wrapped up in Alice and Charlie that you forget what the outcome is -- the story of their lives is so engrossing you forget that Charlie will someday become President.

I can't recommend this book enough -- if anyone else out there reads it I would love to discuss!

Next up? Since I feel like there's really only about 2 weeks left (squeee!) to read anything in the "Bush oeuvre" and have it still be relevant, I'm finally cracking open Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and Hidden Paths to Power. I think I hear Pacey calling me...