Gene Ambaum

Aurora Foyle and her friend Penelope Spunk are doing their best to survive the zombie apocalypse in Seattle. They attend the Survival School and Aurora works at a store that carries scavenged items. When it’s known that Master Zombie Hunter Caligula Green will be speaking at their graduation Penelope wrangles an interview with him for the school newsletter. However, before her appointment to meet him she gets food poisoning so she sends Aurora in her place. Caligula makes it known he lives show more to kill the undead, but now he’s interested in Aurora and wants her to work with him. Aurora would rather stay alive, but Caligula has all the good stuff, so she considers it while he works on wearing down her resistance. In the end, not even intelligence can keep people alive when they do stupid things.

I tried reading Fifty Shades of Grey, but had to stop before all my brains leaked out of my head from the sheer crappiness of the writing. Having read this book and the fun it pokes at FSoG with a malfunctioning cattle prod I have to say I’m very happy with my decision to cease and desist. Everything I need to know about it I learn in this book and it’s much funnier, too.

Aurora is an innocent with an inner slut and Penelope is just a slut. Caligula is weirder than weird. Everything else is just cake. And not post-apocalyptic cake either. This is Cake Boss cake. Fun to look at and even better to eat. I mean, read. The humor in this book isn’t for everyone. It’s not cute funny, it’s sick, twisted funny and I love it. There’s so much going on I just know I’m going to read it again just to see what I missed because you can bet I missed a lot with all my giggling. I swear I forgot how much I love parodies.

*Book source ~ Many thanks to LibraryThing and the author for providing me with a review copy. Please see disclaimer page on my blog. show less

Fifty Shades of Brains is another straight rip-off parody of E.L. James’ infamous BDSM best-seller. In this version, rather than being a financial titan, the Master is a zombie hunter who protects a post-apocalyptic Seattle while keeping his own zombie-fied family out of sight—which eventually poses a problem. His partner, or apprentice, is a recent graduate whose initial attraction to him is based on his ability to procure real coffee.

People bought the original Fifty Shades for the sex, show more not because it was a good writing—it’s routinely described as awful prose. Fifty Shades of Brains, though, is both a good story and well-written; it would be loads of fun even without the sex (but the sex scenes are fun too), even though it shares a consistent first-person narrative voice with the original. This isn’t an easy book to recommend, but for the subset of readers who want to mix sex and death, it can be a delightful distraction. show less

The staff of Mallville Public Library continue their ongoing struggle to help patrons who are vexing, aggressive, and dumbfounding.

There is a return to the dementia storyline briefly begun and quickly dropped last volume, but this run of strips is also is rather abrupt and lacking in emotion. I guess there is a reason these guys stick to gag-a-day writing rather than serialization.

Anyway, this series is always amusing if you like customer service horror stories. At the same time, the show more repetition and negativity can get to be a bit much, and I bet that played a role in the series concluding with the next volume.

My library doesn't have the final volume, though, so I'll need to track it down elsewhere . . .

FOR REFERENCE:

Reprinting Unshelved comic strips originally published on the Unshelved website from April 1, 2013, to September 25, 2014, and Conference Tips originally published in ALA Cognotes newspapers in June 2013, January 2014, and June 2014. show less

This is a compilation of sarcastic and satirical comic strips about libraries, librarians, working for a living, working with the public for a living and striving to maintain a public service while rabid politicians are ranting about the need to privatize everything they possibly can unless it effects them personally. With all that said, it's very funny. Here's a dialogue between Mel, the head librarian, and Dewey the young reference librarian:
Dewey: So there I am playing "Spider Solitaire" show more for like two hours, the same game, trying over and over. Do I give up? No, I persevere.
Finally I look in the help file and do you now what it says? "Not every game is winnable". Not every game is winnable!
Mel: And you did this while you were working on the information desk?
Dewey: My point exactly! All those people waiting in line for no reason! show less