Breathers - A Zombie's Lament

A lot of people have told me about their hate of reading. I like to think that most people hate reading because they haven't found a book that they really love yet. So many people associate reading with the times they were forced to read stuff like Shakespeare in high school. And let's ace it, who likes being forced to do anything? Certainly not me.

Sometimes I also find it difficult to get into a book. But other times I fly through books within a week because I love it so much. That's what happened to me with Breathers.

Breathers is a story about a man named Andy who kills himself and his wife in a horrible car accident. Unlike his wife however, Andy re-animates. He has a broken ankle, a flattened arm and his vocal chords have been ruined from the accident. He can't get a job, can't stay out of the house past 11pm and people are constantly throwing rotten food at him screaming things like "Go back to your grave!" Since every 1 in 200 people re-animates, the undead have formed support groups for themselves called Undead Anonymous. Andy meets a girl at one of these groups and falls in love with her.

Andy goes through much turmoil and trouble in his second life and it's all entertaining. The book literally made me laugh out loud, which made people think I was listening to voices in my head on the train.

The rights to the book have recently been sold to Fox Searchlight Pictures and Diablo Cody has her hands on the project. Most book-to-movie adaptations lose something in the transition. But I really like Diablo Cody so I'm hoping she will do something fantastic with it.

Read Breathers! You won't regret it.