Man oh Man...that was GOOOOD!

Dread Nation was just so good.  SO GOOD!  And I loved hearing the author, Justina Ireland on this podcast. And I LOVED it when I saw on goodreads that this is #1 in a series!
You don't like zombies, you say?
Trust me, you will LOVE this.
You do like zombies, you say?
Trust me, you will LOVE this.
You don't like historical fiction, you say?
Trust me, you will LOVE this.
You do like historical fiction, you say?
Trust me, you will LOVE this.


JUST TRUST ME.
YOU
WILL
LOVE
THIS!

So Weird!

The Rest of Us Just Live Here reminded me of Noggin and Grasshopper Jungle and The Ants Go Marching but not in a rip-off way.  I just think that if one liked any of those, one might also like TROUJLH because one would be able to suspend reality enough to enjoy it.  It is a WEIRD book.  It is snarky and funny.  And I love the "indi-kids" and their names.  And I loved a lot about this book, but I don't know if I got it.
It kinda reminds me of The Lobster, which I saw this weekend.  Although I can't say I liked The Lobster.  It was harsh and painful and sad, but it was a satire.  But I think that it meant a lot more than I got out of it.  But it was too brutal for me to think about it much more.

Great Fun! Yet, meaty, too.

I don't know much about current pop events. I know that is terrible. I don't read US or People and I have no idea who Channing or Jenna are, so I didn't know about Warm Bodies, the movie, coming out in February.  But when a friend recommend the book to me I thought, what the heck, it is thin!  So I read it.  And man!  It was awesome!  What a great book!
It's a zombie book and I don't think it is a YA book, I think it is an adult book, I think.  But I could recommend this to teens and adults.  I mean, it is just a great book that brings up a lot of good questions, like what is going to cause the end of the world?  Is it going to be us?  Our hate and greed?  Will we know even when we are at the end of the world or will it happen so gradually, it will just be here?  What makes a person a human being?  Can a person be so full of hate and distrust and hopelessness that they are "walking dead?" And is there hope?
Great, great book and funny, too!

Well...that was...something

So Shadows is the second book in the Ashes Trilogy by Ilsa J. Bick.  This book was very action packed and gory.  It was all action.  I am not a big fan of all that much action, I guess.  The gore doesn't bother me, but it was 500+ pages of it.  A lot of people die is really gross ways in this book.  But the thing is, you really don't care because you don't know the people.  It is just very action and gore oriented.  I am still hopeful that the third book will bring it all around and that will be cool.  This one was set in Wisconsin!  So that is good for my Road Trip.  But man...I don't know.  It was kind of like a torture porn movie.  The thing is, Bick is a veteran, so I know that she knows what she is talking about and so I right then and there, just have to respect her.  She has a lot to say in a recent blog post about those support the troops magnets on cars.  That they aren't really supporting the troops and that people should really support the troops.  I agree, but it is impossible to know if the people with those magnets do or don't support troops in other ways.  Or if they, themselves, are just back from Afghanistan.  She just doesn't know.  I have a POW/MIA magnet on my car and I do support the troops in the ways that Bick suggests and in other ways.  But if Bick saw my magnet she would be mad.  That was kind of weird.  The other thing is that she is a child psychologist.  That's tough.  I don't really think psychologists make much difference, good or bad, but maybe child psychologists do, but I don't know.  So well, I am kind of lukewarm about Bick.  But I still hope to read Ashes #3.  I also don't know why she was upset about the picture of the soldiers praying before a meal.   I just don't know.

A Little John Denver Never Hurt Anyone

Here's John Denver singing And So It Goes, the song that kept going through my head while I read Ashes, with NGDB.
In Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick, everything does turn to dust.  Well, the world as we know it, that is.  We don't know why, exactly, in this first book in a trilogy, except that is has to do something with EMPs.  It might have been a war, it might have been terrorism, not sure, because well, all communication is gone.  And a lot of people are dead.  And some people are "changed"- meaning that they have turned into zombie types that eat people.  Some people though are enhanced.  Like Alex, who is a brave and tough chick.  She sets out on a hiking trip up through Michigan.  I think she is going to the UP, but I am not sure.   Either way, she doesn't really get to do what she wants to do, which is spread her parents ashes before she dies of the brain tumor that is killing her, because of the EMP thingy.
This is not a happy story.  But it is a really good one.  It is almost two stories though.  First there is the survival story that is about 60% of the book.  Then there is the cult type story after that.  Both are good. They are just really different.  This is a gory kind of book, too.  It is almost 500 pages, but the chapters are very short with makes it really easy to read, if you don't like long books, like I.  Anyway, gross and creepy and great characters.  I loved it.  And it is Michigan so I am reading around the USA!