TUESDAY TOP THREE: Post-Apocalyptic Novels

Over the past couple of years I've discovered that I have a new genre of books that I loooove. I used to be strongly on the side of romance, girly books and fantasy-lite (think Chronicles of Narnia vs. Lord of the Rings). But as I've gotten older, my tastes have matured :)

I don't know if Post-Apocolyptic is the proper genre name for these books, but it's what makes sense to me because these are all "major-event-changes-the-landscape-of-the-world" style books. Way back long time ago, I would have turned my nose up at these books because they were too dense...

The Stand by Stephen King

This book is my all-time, across the board, number 1 favorite. But believe it or not, I don't recommend it out to too many people because it's a book that asks for a certain kind of reader. It's a very long book, but every page is completely engaging and worth the time you will spend reading it.

This is a story of good vs. evil. A virus has spread across the world and killed off 99% of the population. The people who are immune to the virus are divided into 2 camps....good and evil. The book tells us how these people come together in their respective camps and eventually how they have a stand-off against each other.

I could probably write pages on this book and how much I love it, but besides the amazing storyline, the best part is definitely the character development. Stephen King knows how to write about a community of people and get the reader intimately involved with each character without oversharing information and losing you in the details.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

I should start off by telling you that this book gave me some of the craziest dreams I've ever had. And it has been compared to a modern-day version of The Stand. If you read my review above, then you know that I was probably doing toe touches when I heard about this book. Especially because this is the first book of a trilogy set.

This is a vampire book, but it's no Twilight. A super-virus has taken over and is turning people into man-eating vampires. Small communities of people who have not been infected have been set-up and we find out how they survive, fight back, and ultimately try to defeat the vampires. There is so much more to the story than that, but you get the idea.

This is another looong book. But it's 110% worth it. I became emotionally invested in this book the more I read it. There were times when I couldn't read the pages fast enough, and then there were moments when I needed to put the book down because it was kinda scary. (But don't let that scare you away, because while this book keeps you on the edge of your seat...it is not a horror book.) When I finished this book, I could not stop talking about it.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I read a review about this book in Entertainment Weekly and they gave is such an amazing review that I immediately put it in my queue for the library. I think I took this book down in about 2 days.

I assume that everyone out there has read this series, BECAUSE IT'S AMAZING, but in case you haven't...it's set in Panem (the ruined North America region) and is made up of 12 districts. Each year, the districts have to send a boy and a girl to the Capital to compete in the Hunger Games, which is a fight to the death. The last person alive wins (or do they?) Katniss Everdeen steps in for her sister to compete in the Games. From there a whole series of events unravel into a 3 book series that is now being made into movies (starring Jennifer Lawrence of Winter's BONE.)

TIDBIT: This book is very reminscent of a shorty story by Stephen King, called The Running Man. It was also made into a movie, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I recommend you see this solely for the entertainment factor because Ah-nold is in a spandex onesie.