I purchased my copy of The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks at Barnes & Noble, trolling the aisles for funky and interesting titles.  I just can’t pass up quirky books.  You can tell by looking at my bookshelves.  I’ve collected some books that even make me wonder what I was thinking at the time.  Over time I will share some of them with you, reader.

This book by Max Brooks, however, is not one that I regret picking up or ever will.  While the book jacket places The Zombie Survival Guide in the Humor category, it should be in the self-help or how-to section.  This is my second reading of this title.  The Guide is a New York Times Bestseller with over one million copies in print.

Max Brooks is the son of famous filmmaker Mel Brooks and Ann Bancroft.  He also wrote World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War which was turned into a film in 2013.  It is not known to me if this is a complete listing of his written works.

The Zombie Survival Guide can be many different things to a variety of readers.  To a conspiracy theorist, it could resemble a step by step manual on navigating through the coming Zombie Apocalypse and history of the worldwide cover-up by many nations intent on mass destruction.  A city-dwelling retro dressing hipster might view it is a comedic take on the zombie fanboy “Walking Dead” phenomenon.  As for me, a little of both.

As I am an educated and rational socially awkward woman, my personal paranoia feeds into anxiety fueled daydreams of the apocalypse taking out all but the most aggressive and weapon savvy gun show aficionados, leaving me little time for anything but scurrying from one hide-out to another and dodging the “zombies” tottering around in shoes that cost more than my monthly grocery budget, with stylishly coiffed hair and makeup that makes them look like plastic dollies (Oh wait, that’s just a trip to the local shopping center!).  I digress…

I enjoyed this book very much.  It is a thoroughly fleshed out foray into one of our modern fantasies regarding the end of society as we know it. The Zombie Survival Guide gives you the history and science behind the deadliest plague humanity will ever face.

Up next: The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff