Jessica Says What?

I’m late. Deal with it. Top 7 Albums of 2010

Why 7? Why not? Exactly.

In no particular order:

Band of Horses —  Infinite Arms

Sufjan Stevens — The Age of Adz

Sleigh Bells —  Treats

Kanye West — My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Janelle Monae — The ArchAndroid

Arcade Fire — The Suburbs

Yeasayer — Odd Blood

Song of the Year: Tie between Yeasayer “Love Me Girl” and Kanye West “All Of the Lights”. Honorable Mention:  Sleigh Bells “Crown on the Ground” and Sufjan Stevens “Impossible Soul”

What? You want another listicle?

My Personal Top 10 Things That Happened to Me in 2010

10.  Going completely off of allergy meds for the first time in my life

9.   Straight A’s in school

8.   Teh Husband got a much deserved promotion

7.   PRs in Half Marathon and 10k

6.   Getting closer to 30 and being really fine about it

5.   Making new friends in DC

4.   Reducing my hours at work, making grad school a lot less painful

3.   My friend Nano moved to DC!

2.   Visits from my bro Phil, OKC friend Sara, and CO friend Mandy.

1.   Staying healthy, active, and happy, and being pretty damn content with my           life

Zombie Novels Going Meta? : My Year in Zombie Lit

      My not so secret guilty pleasure is reading anything and everything about zombies.  There are a few worth while zombie themed books out there - World War Z, The Walking Dead, and The Zombie Survival Guide to name a few - but most of the stuff is just plain awful. They feature absolutely terrible writing; one-dimensional characters; annoying, repetitive plot lines; and cater mainly to the gross-out-horror literature crowd…and I will read any and all that I find. I have noticed one trend spread through out the good and awful zombie lit and that is that zombie novels are getting more and more meta. 

This year I read three typically awful zombie novels: Dead City by Joe McKinney; Married with Zombies by Jesse Peterson; and Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall.  In each of these books at least one character seems to be devoted to referencing popular culture depictions of zombies and, in some cases, acting and plotting strategies as if they were in a zombie novel or movie.  In Dead City there is a character named Ken who runs a zombie survival and information website.  Ken spends most of his time just talking to the main character about the different kinds of zombies (Hollywood, Voodoo, and Philosophical), how they act in popular depictions (Night of the Living Dead), and the many ethical questions involved in killing the infected (are they still human? If not, at what point do they become unhuman?). Ken doesn’t stick around very long in the book, but not because he gets eaten. In fact, Ken uses his knowledge of why people last or don’t last in zombie movies and ditches the main character after he realizes the main character is foolishly going back to save friends and family.  In a way, Ken’s actions and dialogue almost feel like he recognized he was a side character in a bad zombie book and abandoned the protagonist and his hero quest, thereby ensuring his survival.

Dead City was the only zombie book I read that took itself seriously.  Married with Zombies on the other hand, took the romantic comedy approach ala Shaun of the Dead.  Unlike Shaun of the Dead, however, this couple immediately goes for the “Zed” word, recognizes they are at the heart of the zombie plague, and try to get the hell out of town.  Unlike The Walking Dead and other recent serious depictions, the characters in this book spend no time trying to find a rational explanation and spend very little time worrying about broader implications.  They see dead people rising and eating the living and David, the male protagonist almost immediately says, “Zombies.”  There is very little debate. It’s just automatically zombies.  Then David and Sarah (our main characters) start gathering guns, ammo, and supplies and decide to leave the city even though authorities are telling people to stay home. Why do they do this?  BECAUSE THEY’VE SEEN ALL OF THE MOVIES.  They follow the actions they have lead people in other novels to survival. Again, here, I almost get the sense they are pretending to be characters in a zombie novel to help them survive…which is hard to think about in the abstract because…well *they are exactly that*.

The campiest zombie book I read this year is also the best of the three: Night of the Living Trekkies. This book features a double dose of popular culture meta cognition as our characters are Trekkies at a convention AND in the middle of a zombie plague.  This book features a little more debate about who or what the creatures are, but the main character figures it out early and even says to himself, “This is Dawn of the Freaking Dead.”  Again our main protagonist survives because he consciously takes on his role as the zombie killer and takes his tactics and strategies from other zombie depictions. (He also does all of this while imitating various Star Trek captains, but that’s another review entirely).

I suppose with the rise of popular zombie movies and TV shows (Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, The Walking Dead) it is an inevitable evolution in the zombie novel that the main protagonists skip right over the “what are these creatures/monsters?” debate and move a little faster into the “they are zombies stupid, now shoot him in the head like you’re a hero in a movie” dialogues, but I find myself missing that discovery aspect of the story.  Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like zombie literature is in transition as various sub-genres emerge — from fake survival guides to classic horror and now cross-over scifi and humor books — and now the authors and creators must deal with a saturated market and the “expert” reader that will critique every decision made by characters based on someone else’s narrative.  As a result of this possibility, the novelist must now reference why or why not the zombies in their story do or don’t do something or if the zombification is viral, etc., and why their characters didn’t try X when X worked in The Walking Dead, etc.  That’s a heckuva lot of baggage to cram into your mass market novel these days and still have room for developing characters and intriguing story lines.  Or…I guess you can just add Trekkies.