Book Review: Eat Brains Love by Jeff Hart

Eat Brains Love is about three different teenagers.  Jake Stephens, a normal teenage guy, he likes punk and metal music, Call of Duty, and fast food.  Amanda Blake, the most popular girl at Ronald Reagan High School (where Jake goes too), she is also the hottest girl at the school.  Then there's Cass, who I will get to later.  One day during lunch at R.R.H.S, Jake starts to feel a weird growling in his stomach, when he sees Amanda Blake standing over her best friend, eating her.  The school goes into a panic, and Jake joins Amanda in eating the students.  After the massacre, Government agents come into the school to clean up the mess, this is where Cass comes in.  Cass was selected during a special test to work with a government group to hunt and kill zombies.  Now why would at 16 year old girl be selected?  Because she is a psychic.  Eat Brains Love shows the story through Jake and Cass' eyes, as Cass and her zombie hunting team track down Jake and Amanda, who somehow regained control over their bodies, unless they start to hunger for flesh, and are on the run.  The big thing is, the Government is keeping the whole zombie apocalypse a secret.

This book honestly caught my attention from the title and description.  I was curious about what the book was about, and I thought it was pretty good.  There are some obvious stereotypes in the book which, if you choose to read this, you will see.  I will say that there is a good amount of strong language, a lot of gore (zombies, duh), and some mild sexual content.  But besides that it's a good read.  Maybe the Zombie apocalypse is going on right now.  0_o

~Joe T

Beneath The Surface: Dystopian Round-Up

This year's teen summer reading program is themed Beneath the Surface! The best thing about reading is getting to learn about new ideas and realities that are unfamiliar to us. In dystopias, the characters are very often placed in situations that are just as alien, and they must search "beneath the surface" to discover what the truth is about their post-apocalyptic world. Come and kick your summer reading adventure off with these great dystopian titles!

 In Suzanne Young's The Program, teen suicide is an international epidemic. Sloane has already lost a brother to the disease, and her parents are desperate to keep her alive. She can't cry or express any honest emotion, because at the first sign of depression she will be shipped off to the Program and return stripped of her memories. When her boyfriend, James, begins to spiral into the illness, Sloane must find a way to keep him alive or risk him losing all memories of her forever.

 Incarceron by Catherine Fisher introduces a society where criminals and their descendents are sentenced to live in Incarceron, a living prison that enacts its own punishments. Finn has spent his entire life in the prison with no hope of escape. All that changes when one day he finds a key that allows him to speak to the warden's daughter outside Incarceron, and plan an impossile escape.

  

(Stupendously) Bad Trip

There are some people who are fantasy people. There are some people who are sci-fi people. Then there are people like Platte F. Clark who have decided why not have both? In the same book. At the same time. Which is one reason why "Bad Unicorn" has to be one of my top book picks this year.

Middle school is hard enough when your mom doesn't understand your gaming obsession and you have to watch out for a bully called the Kraken, but then Max Spencer discovers the weird book he's had for years is magic. Like, real magic. And he's the heir to the greatest sorcerer of all, Maximilian Sporazo. It gets even worse when he accidentally transports himself, his friends Dirk and Sarah, and his local gaming store owner Dwight hundreds of years into the future... Meanwhile, a sorcerer in another realm is looking to get a hold of Max and his book. He recruits Princess, the most feared unicorn in the realm, to help him. But how can you track someone who's time traveled? And how exactly does one get back to the right time let alone fight a carnivorous unicorn (in the past AND the future), especially when you've only just discovered you can do magic?

With a bad tempered zombie duck, man-eating unicorns, golf-worshipping monks, more zombies, scary dragons, robot reality TV, and a talking sentient centipede game, "Bad Unicorn" is hysterical and awesome in so many amazing ways. Go read it. Now.

The Age-Old Question: Book or Movie?

Movie adaptations of popular books have always been a Hollywood trend, and this holiday season is no exception. Here are a few titles of wildly popular books that you'll get to watch on the big screen:

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo is a classic story about love, justice, and salvation set in 19th century France. It follows Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who struggles to avoid recapture by the policeman Javert while taking care of the young Collette, the daughter of ill-fated prostitue Fantine.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy follows the titular Anna, a beautiful woman trapped in an unhappy marriage to Aleksei, a man twenty years her senior. Anna's fateful decision to relentlessly pursue an affair with Count Vronksy results in tragedy and heartbreak for nearly everyone she knows.

Next in "I love you, please don't eat me" genre...

Did you know "Frankenstein" was written on a dare? A bunch of teenaged friends (who happened to end up being famous writers) a couple hundred years ago sat around talking about reanimating dead corpses late one night. They finally dared each other to write their own scary story and "Frankenstein" was born. How is this relevant to my book review? Because that story kept popping into my mind as I was reading "Warm Bodies" by Isaac Marion.  It's one of those interesting and off-the-wall books that seems like the original idea was some how related to a random late-night discussion among friends. Are zombies really mindless & shambling? Or do they think and feel? Can they be cured? Can you date one without losing your head?

Braaaiiinns!

Yay, October!

It's that time of year again--the perfect opportunity to read stories that will make you scared to be alone in your house. And what better way to send shivers up your spine than with that quintessential creature-feature, zombies? The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan serves up the perfect blend of suspense, terror, and gore to make you wish you still had that nightlight.

Mary lives in a small village in the middle of the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Through all hours of the day and night, she and the other villagers are plagued by the incessant moans of the Unconsecrated--undead humans longing for warm flesh. The only thing that separates the living and the dead is a chainlink fence, and when Mary's mother reaches through it to be bitten by her Unconsecrated husband on the other side, lives are torn apart in a way no one imagined.

It is a truth universally acknowledged...

...That the month which contains so much love-themed commercialism leaves book lovers in want of Pride and Prejudice. One of my favorite light reads last year was Prom and Prejudice, which our Book Lady blogged about here. It's a modern-day update set in a prep school, with way more coffee.

The Walking Dead, at Your Library

No question about it, zombies are hot right now. Here are a few notable zombie books I've read recently.

Ever since the first teenager walked the earth, adults have been the enemy. Now it's even more literally true, when a strange virus has turned everyone over sixteen into mindless cannibal monsters, leaving kids and young teenagers to fend for themselves in an increasingly desperate fight. It's not for the faint of stomach, but for those that like their zombie movies both gory and thought-provoking, The Enemy and its sequel, The Dead, by Charlie Higson are a sure bet.

Love in the Time of Flesh Eating Monsters

I dislike romances. And when I say dislike, I mean I'd rather have rabid hamsters gnaw at my eyeballs than read a sappy and/or tragic love story. That being said, zombies and mutated flesh craving monsters pretty much make everything better. They even got me reading romances.

The funny thing about Carrie Ryan is that I read a really good short story of hers in the Zombies VS Unicorns anthology before reading The Forest of Hands & Teeth. The romantic plotline? Mary has loved Travis for years but Travis' brother Harry is in love with her, so Travis picks Mary's BFF Cass to marry despite the fact that he too is in love with Mary. Oh yeah, and Cass is in love with Harry. Got that? Now add in their village suddenly being overrun by the zombie hordes that have surrounded them for generations. The four teens take off with Mary's brother and sister-in-law to start a new life... unfortunately for some that will mean a new life as a resurrected cannabalistic corpse.