My thoughts on optometrists and reading a Really Good Book

Sometimes reading a book is like going to the eye doctor...

Ma'am, can you make out the bottom line of letters?
Well, I can't see them in detail, but I can sort of make out the general shape of them...
Could you please read them?


That's what reading a really good book is like. If you can't see all the details and put them together in your head, then you're not getting the full picture, and the optometrist is going to write you up a new prescription.

Well, not really. You're optometrist isn't really there when you read a good book...

... Or, at least mine isn't...........................

Anyway, for example, when you read something really philosophical, but it's so good you can't put it down long enough to process everything that's going on. You can kind of see the shape of the story, you can follow along with the upfront plot of the whole thing. But you miss out on the more subtle details, the metaphors, the themes. And isn't that the whole point.

I guess that's what rereading a book is for.

And also what glasses are for.

But either way, whenever I read a really good book (e.i., The Ask and The Answer, sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness...), my brain just won't shut up. It just goes, and goes and goes until I have to actually flip the switch and turn myself off. (What? You can't do that? I thought everyone could...)

The point, my friends, is that a good book fuels the brain, to no end.

I've been thinking a lot about zombies lately.

Yes, I just finished the Maze Runner by James Dashner, and yes, that was amazing too. Not to mention, I've been reading andor watching a lot of apocalyptic crap....

And those two things are probably related. But anyhow....

I was thinking about zombies after I finished this book, and it had me wondering....

What if zombies are as scared shit less by themselves as we are of them???

Has anyone else ever considered this? I mean, all of the pop-culture stuff related to zombies has to do with how appalling they are, and how they have to be run from/killed/cured. I mean, you don't see any teen literature about how misunderstood zombies are.... Vampires get all the glory, and I'd say they are probably just as bad a zombies, just more romantic.

And what's so appalling about zombies? Their maggot infested, half-decayed flesh? Certainly. Their animated corpses. Yes, absolutely.

But it's their mindlessness that really gets me. How they don't seem to remember who they were, or what it was like to be human.

But what if that really isn't the case? What if, like vampires, they are merely construed as monsters, but really are just as humane as the rest of us, capable of living in society, with regular humans? What if they're sickened by what they've become, and their sudden craving for fresh human flesh? (Fresh Flesh, Fresh Flesh, Fresh Flesh!) What if, instead of having a completely empty head (literally... they're brains probably fell out long ago), they remember what it was like to be alive, and just want to get that back?

I'm just saying.... Why are zombies always the monster that never gets any sympathy?

So, I think I've made my point pretty clear.

OH, and I call dibs on the zombie sympathy, teen fiction novel, in which a zombie tries to integrate back into society without being detected for what it really is, and lives a normal life, going to school, falling in love, and eating terrible cafeteria food... In your FACE Stephenie Meyer!

And I'll wrap this entry up by saying that maybe it would actually be terrifying to have a mindful zombie. They would know exactly what they were doing, and they would know how to get to you better... Or at least that was what it was like in the dream I had the other night. But we'll save that story for another entry.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. What did the vegetarian zombies say?

Grains! GRAINSSS!