Book: The Zombie Survival Guide

After reading World War Z, I felt I should also read the survival guide. Just in case.

It was a light read and fairly entertaining. Though I can totally see the complaint a character in wwz had about it being too focused on America. Still, I enjoyed it. Hopefully I will never need the skills it taught. I am far too lazy to survive a zombie apocalypse.

Compared to WWZ, it was not as well written. But it was written beforehand so I can see the author's skill improving.

Supposedly there's a movie being made for these books, but the early news I've read makes it sound like they only read the back covers. Disappointing!

Book: Anathem

A couple months ago I asked ben for a reading recommendation. He suggested Anathem. He neglected to warn me that the book was over 900 pages long and heavy enough to kill a child.

Despite the back pain, I stuck with it. It was a very difficult book to read. And a bit hard to explain.

Anathem is set on a planet (Abre) similar but not to Earth. On Abre, high intellectual thought is cloistered away into monasteries called Maths. In the maths, nearly all modern technology is banned. Telescopes seemed to be the most advanced tools they had to work with. The maths are then broken up into 1 year, 10 year, 100 year, and 1000 year sections, indicating the number a years between when the gates open to let people (and ideas) in and out. The rest of society is very similar to ours, complete with cell phones (jeejahs), movies (speelies), and the internet (the reticulum). They are suspicious of those that live behind the walls of the maths.

The first part of the book follows the life of a young man in a 10 year math around the time the gates are to open. It's a bit long and slow at times, but it sets a good foundation of how things are done on Abre before the second part of the book changes everything.

The second part of the book is about 450 pages of quantum physics lessons broken up by brief interludes of daring escapes. Basically everything you learned in part one gets thrown out the window. And every chapter is filled with thick discussions on quantum many worlds theories that hurt my head.

A woman on the train stopped me while I was reading. She said she had never seen someone reading with such focus before and wanted to know what the book was. I can only wonder hat sort of face I was making while reading to stir such curiosity in her.

While I am sure I only understood maybe 10% of the theory of the book, I can proudly say that I was able to follow 100% of the plot. I was even able to predict a few surprise turns here and there. So if the plot seems interesting to you, don't be scared off by the science. The story itself carries without a problem.

And it has a happy ending. Everything that bothered me about Abre at the start of the book was resolved by the end. So I guess ben recommended a good one. I would recommend it as well, assuming you don't intend on carrying it around with you.