This Week in Local News / The Boys' Summer Book Club

Readers, perhaps you'd like to know how the boys feel about some of the major recent Larryville stories, such as the "hate crime" outside the Replay Lounge? (sad). Or today's death at the Oread Inn? (confusing). Or the closing of Joe Schmo's restaurant? (Chip: "I fucking told you that bocce ball would not work in the Midwest!").

But since we haven't had a reader in many days (despite tittie pictures and a discussion of The Human Centipede!), we don't know what you want to hear about. So we're just going to consider Justn Cronin's new post-apocalyptic vampire/zombie novel The Passage.

The Passage has already been annointed by virtually every media-outlet as the book of the summer, a behemoth (766 pages) of a page-turner about a little girl in post-apocalyptic America pursued by hordes of "virals," who are "hairless, insectile, glow-in-the-dark mutations" (interweb). The Passage netted Cronin, a former winner of the PEN/Hemingway award, a $3.75 million book deal. Is Cronin just slumming, wanting to cash in on the recent vampire/zombie craze? Or is the book truly awesome? We'll let you know 766 pages from now. But here's the first line to get you hooked:

"Before she became the Girl From Nowhere--the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years--she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy."

Laura Miller, in Salon, says that the book proves it's still "possible to write a novel that revels in narrative momentum and pop mythos while still honoring the textures of real people, places and things."

Chip: "Praise it all you like, if a book's first sentence does not pass my 'boner test' of good fiction, I'm unlikely to proceed."

Richard: "The only question for me is whether I'll read this before or after I read Brains: A Zombie Memoir, which is written as a first-person account from a 'rare sentient zombie.' Enjoy this excerpt:

"I forgave the humans for hunting me, as I forgave myself for eating them. Like Anne Frank, in spite of everything, I still believed we are all really good at heart."