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World War Z
Welcome back to the zombie apocalypse. Or almost apocalypse. This week on Novel Ideas, we read World War Z by Max Brooks. This book is a little bit different from other books that we’ve read in that it doesn’t really have characters or a plot, but is instead written in the style of an oral history. Because of that, we changed our format slightly for this week’s episode. We talked about the movie, the breakdown of society, the nature of celebrity, and gender balance. We also discussed zombie tropes, the fact that dogs hate zombies, historical zombie fiction, and zombie war psychology. Basically, we discussed everything zombie related we could think of.
The music bump is “The Trooper” by Iron Maiden, used to bait zombies at the Battle of Hope.
Recommendations:
An interesting and compelling book about 80-90% of the time. It drags just a little at the end, but not enough to put a damper on the experience of reading it. The book includes some excellent world building in telling a well covered genre story in a different way.
Ben: 8.5/10
Gabs: 8/10
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Here comes the second book of the Novel Ideas Harry Poddercast Extravaganza, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling. In this episode we discuss the invisibility cloak and how we managed to overlook it in the first episode, the right and wrong ways to deal with celebrity, wizard racial slurs, and the level of heroism one can reasonably expect from a 12 year old child. We also discuss the horrible house of dicks, what Harry Potter would look like if it was written by GRRM, feral cars, and keeping giant monsters as pets. We also take a quick break for hammer time. We hope you enjoy it!
If you want to get in on the fun, let us know as soon as possible. We haven’t recorded for book three just yet, but I (Ben) am almost 200 pages into the fourth book, so time is running short.
The music bump is “The Chamber of Secrets” from John Williams’s excellent score to the not-so-excellent movie of the same name.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – 80’s Movie Bully Evil
Recommendations:
Probably better than you remember! Read it!
Novel Ideas 