Well it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, and I thought I’d dive back in and see what we can clear! If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll definitely have noticed a pattern in my reading desires. We’re currently back to my apparent zombie/plague phase!
I originally saw this on Becky’s Book Blog
Rules
Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.
Order on ascending date added.
Take the first 5/10/however many books. If done again, start from where you left off.
Read the synopses of the books
Decide: should it stay or should it go?
The Gathering Dead – Stephen Knight
Ah, military man deals with zombies and gets trapped. Even though I tend to stay away from military-heavy books, I feel like I’ve seen this too often in one form or another across various forms of zombie media. This book first came out in 2011, and I can’t quite remember if there were LOADS of these types of books around at that time, so maybe it was a little more original then. Either way, it really doesn’t sound like my kind of book.
Status: Gone
This might be another instance where time has not treated this premise well. It’s a zombie book! But never uses the word zombie! To quote the lengthy Goodreads summary, “There’s no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore’s sake. Combining the atmosphere and tone of George Romero’s classic living dead films with the attitude and awareness of 28 Days (and Weeks) later”…Yeah, seen it. Maybe a bit (way?) too much by this point.
Status: Gone
Based on the cover, I thought this might be a book I’d possibly really enjoy. Unfortunately, the synopsis makes me think different. A virus turns into a pandemic turns into zombies and our main character is immune, and this is cited as “Buffy meets the Walking Dead”. Look, if I wanted Buffy or Walking Dead, I’d watch those shows. I get why people market books like this, but sometimes it puts me off. I’m not even a big fan of Walking Dead, but once you’ve put that in there, you’ve drawn a comparison I doubt the book can actually live up to.
Status: Gone
Dying to Live – Kim Paffenroth
Lone survivor in zombie apocalypse, except he’s not, and he finds others, and even the summary sounds like it’s trying very hard to be like “hey hey look at me I’m different” while still managing to sound like most other zombie books out there, and of course the blurb ends up with an indication “humans are monsters too!” At this point…yawn.
Status: Gone
At this point, I feel like I’ve read the same bloody summary (or near enough) 5 times for this post. There’s a mysterious virus, victims wake with a single purpose – to spread the infection! There’s a plucky group of survivors including a soldier, a teacher, a cop, a student….It’s just one of those instances where it feels like this book is, like the previous ones, trying so so hard to be a ‘different kind of zombie novel’ while actually ending up like a lot of other zombie novels.
Status: Gone
Well I think this is a first! All 5 books gone from my want to read shelf. Which makes sense, because honestly all 5 sound very familiar in different ways. Hopefully we can get rid of some more next time, as I really do need to reduce that want to read shelf.
If you’ve read any of these, or agree/disagree with my choices, please do let me know!
Unwrapping Words 