Category: Comedy

My Life as a White Trash Zombie, by Diana Rowland

My Life as a White Trash Zombie, by Diana Rowland, narrated by Allison McLemore

This book was a huge surprise to me. I was told it was fantastic – funny, fun, good plot – but I didn’t really believe. I mean, there are so many zombie books out there, right? But it really was hilarious and fun. I’m glad I gave it a chance.

Angel Crawford is a down-on-her-luck, pill-popping, high school drop-out who can’t hold down a job and is being dragged down by her alcoholic father and deadbeat boyfriend. One day, she wakes up in a hospital – told that she overdosed and was found naked on the side of the road. Humiliated, she is about to return home when she gets a mysterious note telling her to drink a mysterious power-shake each day, and that she now has a job picking up and helping autopsy dead bodies. She’s told she must keep this job for at least a month, or she’s going to prison for parole violation. Angel is terrified of prison, so she begrudgingly starts her new job. 

Strangely, she realizes that she desperately wants to eat the brains of the bodies she’s been autopsying – and she thinks it must be some weird side-effect of the OD…maybe she’s just going crazy. But then hints begin to turn up that she’s been zombified. Proving to be more intelligent than she thought, Angel begins to investigate who zombified her, sent her the mysterious notes, and who, in God’s sake, is the serial murderer who’s beheading all his victims?

Like I said, it was really funny. I loved Angel’s character, and the mystery kept me listening even when I should have been doing other things. Angel really developed during this book – changing from an self-hating loser to an almost self-confident, poised, intelligent woman. (There’s still some room left for “refinement” in the next books, of course.) Much to my surprise and gratification, this was a very character-driven book. I will definitely pick up more from this series. 

This book gets 4.5 stars for humor, characterization, and mystery.

Knights of Badassdom


In the spirit of the Halloween season, I watched The Knights of Badassdom with my boyfriend. As expected, it was both cheesy and hilarious. For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, here is the YouTube official trailer.  In summary, Joe is an intelligent underachiever who lives with his accidental millionaire friend in a castle. When Joe is dumped by his long-time girlfriend, his friends decide it would be a great distraction to kidnap Joe. He wakes up at a LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) expedition at the “Fields of Evermore” (a large parking lot near a forested park). There, an “epic battle” is about to take place. It’s all going pretty well until Joe’s sorcerer friend accidentally summons a succubus that looks exactly like Joe’s ex-girlfriend. The succubus wanders around the forest attacking LARPers, who mistake her for a lost LARPer soul who has stumbled upon the “wrong” LARPing event. Joe and his friends must send the succubus back to hell.


This movie is exactly what you would expect from the summary. It’s silly. It’s funny (if you “get” LARP). And it’s gory, but only in a humorous way. One of Joe’s friends is played by Peter Dinklage (of Game of Thrones fame). Yes everyone. You can stream this on Netflix.


For humor, originality, and quality LARPing

Reason for watching: Thought this would be a nice touch for the Halloween season

John Dies at the End, by David Wong

 John Dies at the End

Written by David Wong, Narrated by Stephen R. Thorne

Reason for Reading: Real Life bookclub

Genre: Quirky adult horror


Review
This book is the king of unreliable narration. Presumably, this book is about David and John, two friends in a Midwestern town who need to fight off evil forces when a new drug (soy sauce)  opens a door to a parallel universe. Although it’s clear that David exaggerates a good deal for the sake of story-telling, it is up to interpretation whether David and John are really kicking the EF from PU butt, or if they’re hallucinating. Either way, it’s a wild, crazy, and very humorous ride. The humor is very dark, dry, and sometimes witty. It was my favorite part of the book. The plot was fairly non-existent, though. The book was more about action and weirdness – the story was just too wild to actually have a coherent plot. During the middle of the book, I was starting to regret that it was so long because I’m more of a plot-driven than situational-driven reader. But I’m glad I hung in there, because I got some great laughs and may view the world a tiny bit differently after listening to this book. 

You wouldn’t think this book would lend itself well to audio format, but Stephen R. Thorne did an amazing job. His delivery of the dry humor and action was spot on. I’m happy that I took the risk on audio. 🙂

Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome

2012 Book 168: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

Written by Jerome K. Jerome, Narrated by Frederick Davidson

Reason for Reading: This was my “monthly random pick” which took me two months to get to. 🙂 My next “monthly random pick” is The Passage, by Justin Cronin. This book is a classic, so it fits in my Classics Club list. 🙂 

Review
In this classic novel of humor, three men (to say nothing of the dog) decide to cure their hypochondriac ailments by getting fresh air and exercise. They decide to travel down the Thames in a boat. The narrator jumps back and forth between humorous description of their preparations/trip and silly reminiscences of loosely connected incidents about the characters. This is the type of book where, at the end, you’re not sure if there was any story in there at all, but you certainly enjoyed the trip regardless. It was a good-natured, happy sort of humor. This is a short book, and certainly worth reading if you like the classics. 🙂