(Please note: If you have never watched The Walking Dead, but plan to, don’t read this post. Spoilers abound.)
While The Walking Dead isn’t my favorite show of all time, that honor remains with Twin Peaks or The X-Files, it’s up there on the list of television I enjoy. Sure they took way, way, WAY too long to kill off Andrea and Lori, and the second season was really slow, but the episodes that are good are practically perfection. Although don’t put down the baby! Why? Why would you do that?
There’s also Daryl. Near perfection, with the introduction of a shower.
Anyway…
So what should you read if you’re fan of The Walking Dead? In no particular order, except I’ll start with the obvious and World War Z is nowhere to be found:
10. The Walking Dead. Although the similarities between the show and the comic aren’t as close as you might think.
09. Pontypool Changes Everything // Tony Burgess. It’s a movie too.
08. Station Eleven // Emily St. John Mandel. Post-apocalyptic and thematically similar.
07. Zone One // Colson Whitehead. A literary take on the zombie genre. And as Glen Duncan says “A literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star.” Read it.
06. The Stand // Stephen King. Not zombies, but there are groups of good survivors and bad survivors.
05. Black Moon // Kenneth Calhoun. I recommend this one with reservations, I hated it, but that doesn’t make it bad.
04. Cell // Stephen King. Zombies by cell phone.
03. The Missing // Sarah Langan. A solid horror novel featuring…zombies.
02. The Flame Alphabet // Ben Marcus. Language is killer.
01. The n-Body Problem // Tony Burgess. Delightfully weird. Read it.
To read more lists, check out The Broke and The Bookish.