Rainer Maria Rilke

"Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be repaid you a thousand and a thousand times, and however your life may turn,-it will, I am certain of it, run through the fabric of your growth as one of the most important threads among all the threads of your experiences, disappointments, and joys."--Rainer Maia Rilke


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Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Book and Movie Are Two Totally Different Beings

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

Horror

I read this book prior to seeing the movie World War Z because I always like to read the book first.  With this book and movie, I needn't have bothered with my rules.  The two are not remotely alike--not even enough for a "based on" label.

The book is a little different in that it doesn't have a main character or really even a plot. The book is written by Max Brooks as if he were simply a reporter recording this for history's sake.  It is a series of interviews he conducts.   Many different characters are simply telling their history around a centralized theme:  the zombie apocalypse.  It's a different kind of book to read, but once I got used to it, I liked it.  The flow is abrupt and sudden, just like watching a news documentary.  It is about the "Zombie War", but really just the aftereffects, after the zombies have almost totally eradicated life on earth and how some humans survived this plague.  Much of the book is told through "official channels", so it has that dry fact feeling, except that it's about the zombie plague.  It starts out with an epidemiologist who wants to trace the plague back to the original source, to patient zero. 

Taken independently, the book and movie are quite good. If you try and mesh the two together, it's a mess for the brain to figure out. 

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