I love zombie books, movies, and comic books. Zombies resonate with me the way no other monsters do. Is it because they are mindless, and I fear losing my mental strength more than I fear losing any other of my physical capacities? Perhaps.

Or maybe it's simply that zombies reflect an underlying disquiet, an unsettled factor of wildness in our otherwise civilized world.

Zombie movies give me the visual splash and color (red) to bring to my mind the imagery of the zombie story.

Comic books like The Walking Dead give an ongoing storyline with continuity and character development.

But zombie novels... well, I can immerse myself in a good book any day of the week. If it has legions of walking dead, I'm happy as a clam in a clam bake!

World War Z is Max Brooks' ethnographic account of survival stories from the zombie apocalypse. Everyone who survived those terrible days has their own zombie survival story to tell, and a large number of these are collected in World War Z for your perusal.

The book is gripping and tremendous. It tackles the zombie apocalypse with genuine myth-building solidity. You can read this book and know exactly how zombies "work" if you're thinking of tackling a zombie society yourself.

Monster Island is the first in a trilogy of zombie apocalypse books by David Wellington. Wellington originally published the books on his website, and has made them available through Amazon.com's print publishing option. Monster Island takes place in Manhattan, just a short time after the dead come to life, and it introduces antagonist super-zombies. It is very challenging to write a zombie novel when zombies are, in essence, a force of nature (or super-nature), and cannot be bargained with, so Wellington has added a second type of zombie that has higher brain function and can, in fact, direct its own actions.

I found Monster Island compelling, but I honestly didn't care for the "thinking zombie" trope. I feel that zombies should really function as hungry flesh waves-- a zombie narrative should, in essence, be a struggle of "man versus nature" rather than "man versus man."

Soulless by Christopher Golden is a YA zombie novel. It takes place on the East Coast, centered again in New York, and tells the story of what happens on the day the dead come back. Golden's zombies are more like reanimated dead-- they have memory and some thought, and are essentially there to kill their living family and friends. The novel is a quick read, and it's appropriate for teen readers who have moved past the point where a novel can give them nightmares. Which means I probably shouldn't have read it, since all zombie novels and movies give me very colorful dreams! 

The Stupidest Angel is yet another hilarious Christopher Moore satirical novel. In this case, though, it's a story about a Christmas Miracle Gone Wrong. Starting with an accident, continuing with an innocent-hearted child's wish, and leading to the exclamation by a newly-risen undead townsman: "I don't know, but I'm famished. Does anyone else feel like some brains?"

It's... well, frankly, it's hilarious. It's zomedy done well, and definitely worth a read (or a listen-- the audiobook is hilarious).