GOD do I hate “chick lit.”

I am filled with quiet despair, walking along the beach and seeing titles like “Mr. Wrong Now” or “Beauty and the Shoe” or some other horrible “beach reading.”

If you want disposable literature, read a magazine. If you want quirky, alternative summer reads, try one of these:

World War Z

by Max Brooks

This is an “oral history of the zombie wars.” The premise is that, after the recent zombie crisis, the author traveled all over the world and took down lots of different people’s stories.

It sounds like a dumb premise, but the book is ridiculously good. Brooks has a real ear for dialogue, so the accounts seem realistic. This is alarming to those of us who are highly suggestible. *coughmecough*

Plus, the neat thingy on the website said I have a 36% chance of survival in the event of a zombie war. Sweet!

Absurdistan

by Gary Shteyngart Read More »

I mean, I’ve heard of being afraid of intimacy before, but this guy takes it to a whole new level. This guy built a robot girlfriend.That’s right, a robot girlfriend. Dude was a 33-year-old virgin until he met (read: MADE) Alice, his robot girlfriend who includes a chatbox to talk through and a teledildonic device, which, I assure you, is exactly what it sounds like.

I’m sorry, but this is straight out of a Philip K. Dick novel. I find it really frightening that there are actual people who are so emotionally and sexually disfunctional that they need to build robots to have relationships with. Read More »