AnonymousCoworker

I’m not the type of person who does a lot of reading. I can walk into a record store and spend hours flipping through used CDs, leave the store empty-handed, and still feel like my time was well spent. I can go to a video store, pick “Stealth“, watch it, be consciously aware that I chose to turn my brain off, and not have a problem with it. With books, though, it becomes a different issue. Because of my obsessive compulsive nature I have to finish any book that I start. Because I got my degree in Literature, I analyze every book I read as I read it. And because 90% of all books in bookstores and libraries are schlock, I prefer to only read recommendations from friends, and never actually go in one of those buildings, for fear that I’ll start reading a crap book and be unable to not finish it.

Since I’ve been with Mrs. ACW, who reads constantly and has been known to make trips to the library on consecutive subsequent days, I’ve started taking risks again, and choosing books off the shelves. At first I was only reading books by authors with whom I was already familiar. Then I started reading the novels behind some of my favorite movies. And finally I started picking a few books off of Mrs. ACW’s stack if she said that she thought I would like them.

So last week I did something that I haven’t done since I was about 12. I picked a book because it looked interesting, and because I thought I would get at least a little interest out of it, without having any knowledge about the book.

I’ve been reading this book called Mondo Zombie, and it’s so terrible that I think I’m going back to not checking any books out of the library anymore.

And I know what you’re thinking, “Mondo Zombie? How could you lose? You love zombies!” And it’s true; I do love zombies. It’s the necrophilia that’s starting to bother me.

“But ACW, you also love necrophilia. You have a tag for it. It’s at the top of this post.” To clarify, I don’t love necrophilia. You will not find a stronger supporter for necrophilia who doesn’t personally engage in it than me. I find it revolting, to be completely blunt, so when the first story in the book featured it prominently I thought, “Well, at least we got that out of the way,” only to find that most of the stories in the book feature as a central plot tenet the horrifying act of boning the bejeezus out of a corpse.

“Well, at least there’s no incest, right? Right? Please say there’s no incest.” I wish I could. I really wish I could. Those stories that don’t hope to inspire raging hard-ons for doing the “decomposing dirty-dirty” instead hope to inspire the same via inter-familial conjugality. But that’s not all! One mouth-breathing author hoping to create award-winning short-fiction weaves a tale that seems to steal its characters from “Kids” and its plot from that episode of the X-Files where the hillbillies keep their quadruple-amputee mother on a board under a bed until they’re ready to roll her out and rape her again. Add to that the element of zombified sex-slavery, and throw in a dash of “Deliverance“, and you have the single-most appalling tale in the whole sordid collection: necrophilia/zombie incest.

I don’t know the people who wrote these stories, and I don’t want to know these people. Their writing is bad and they should feel bad. The worst part is that all the stories are so derivative of Romero’s movies that they all end up running together and sounding the same. And because the other thread that runs through each story besides necrophilia is someone being zombified via a bite to the peener. Every story!

So, if you’re a perverted, living-in-your-parent’s-basement type who gets off on terrible writing about two undead siblings banging the crap out of each other, this is the book for you. Or, if you’re insulating your home for the winter, this book weighs in at a hefty 400-plus pages, so it’s great for shredding and blasting into your walls to use as insulation.