Welcome, y'all, to my entry for the
Zombie Blog Hop, hosted by
Jolie du Pre of Precious Monsters! Participants can blog about anything zombie-esque, so I chose to tell youse guys about three zombie novels which make me giggle like a giddy schoolboy*.
*
I believe in equal giggling opportunities for both sexes.
'K, so: first up is
Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror, Version 2.0 (with a groovy one-year-later epilogue which is not to be missed). In TSA, Moore revisits the fictional town of Pine Cove, CA, in which tourists flock to the fake-Tudor-Christmasy-cheer while a local kid witnesses the accidental killing of "Santa Claus" (an Evil Developer and all-round douchebag, who totally had it coming). The titular angel, Raziel, grants the boy's Christmas wish that Santa return from the dead, while the Sheriff quits pot so he can afford a special gift for his wife (a schizophrenic ex-scream queen, who's gone off her meds so she can afford to get
him something special), all while she's planning the town's annual Lonesome Christmas party, which just
happens to take place at the Santa Rosa Chapel,
which just happens to be located
right next to a cemetery. You can see where this is going, right? I break this bad-boy out every December for another read, 'cause, you know, 'tis the season, and whatnot.
Next is the book which sparked a new(ish) genre, the literary mash-up:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. As I noted in my Amazon.com review for this book, what I adore about it is the juxtaposition of well-known and well-turned phrases against the ludicrous. And Dudes, it's HILARIOUSLY funny. READ IT, if for nothing else but the helpful Reader's Discussion Guide (Question #7: Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?). Or for the nifty illustrations sprinkled throughout (with captions such as "Elizabeth lifted her skirt, disregarding modesty, and delivered a swift kick to the creature's head.") OR for sentences like the one Catherine De Bourgh utters near the end of the book, "Well? Have you anything to say before I remit you to Satan?" Too, when zombies (here referred to as the "Unmentionables" or "The Zed Word") crash the ball at which Darcy first disses Lizzy, Mr. Bennet urges his daughters to take them out by forming the "Pentagram of Death." C'mon, like that's not hysterically funny. (It's bloody well funny-as-hell to
me, at any rate, and that's all I actually care about anyways, so...)
Finally, we have
The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor. Now, I have to admit it's been quite some time since I first read this
Prairie Home Companion parody, plus I've got Momnesia, so details are fuzzy for me. However, I do recall that it features a meteor which starts the whole mess, a murderess, dueling clergy, bachelor farmers, a serial killer, a dominatrix, and of course, the "zomboes," as one character calls them. Possibly the funniest thing about this book is how these stalwart Minnesotans manage to take the zombie apocalypse in stride and go about the business of living. *I* should be so hard-to-rattle!
