Duncan Ainsworth

One of my favourite authors at the moment, possibly ever. Having read the zombie survival guide and currently reading World War Z, I have to say he is one of the most detailed writers on the hypothetical zombie apocalypse. In the Zombie Survival guide he has covered all the essential ideas and anything else one might want to consider when the dead begin to rise. It’s so intricately detailed, you could follow it closely to the letter and do OK for a long period of time.

World war Z on the other hand, depicts a post apocalypse world where humanity is picking itself from the ashes of chaos this so detailed it’s awesome. The interviews and first hand accounts are what I imagine what they would be if they were real.

I really was engrossed by this book, the more you read the more you wanted to know how events unfolded, even though you can kind of assume everything works out you want to know all the details of how it happened. I found that finishing it was quite satisfying it provided enough closure so you felt like the story had come to a proper ending yet it was open to leave wondering how this alternate/hypothetical human universe progressed or whether it truly returned to some vague form of normality or whether the world was so irrevocably changed forever.

In summary, this book is an absolute must read for any fans of zombie related things or apocalypses for that matter. About Max Brooks I’ll say this, he is the George A. Romero of zombie fiction for me. Both his books have been incredibly detailed, sublimely engrossing and awesomely graphic and I urge everyone to go read them now.

So I have finished my first week of lectures, tutorials and lab work and so far it has been good, if a little tiring, I have a couple of really long days and its been really odd after four months out of education. The Programming in C is quite hard, but I reckon once I get used to it will get easier, hopefully.

This weekend I need to do some food shopping for more of the basics and a few extras, I might also go to the market in the city centre and have a look at what goes on there. I’m also going to get some washing done and go to  gym. So hopefully by the time the weekend is over I should have been slightly productive with my time.

I have a couple of things to do come monday to set things up for the rest of the week. I have a couple of books to buy so I need to do some shopping  around and try find the best deal for them. I also have to book another doctors appointment to sort out my medication. I also need to start looking for jobs, now I have my timetable it’s easier to work out when I can do paid work.I reckon next week will be another good week, so I’m looking forward to it.

So on Saturday I moved into halls and so far it is going well. I’ve met my flatmates as well and they all seem easy to get on with, so that’s good. Everything is going good I guess I’m still not sure on the whole socialising thing.

Anyway today was sports and societies day over by the Student Union which was good, I think I’d quite like to start playing rugby again as part of my get fit, get healthy campaign. I also joined the gym today and I’m actually quite excited to go and use it which helps, although I haven’t done any proper exercise in a week so it’ll probably be a bit horrid to begin with, oh well.

They even had a Gamers Society for things like role-playing and table top gaming, so I’m going to check that out as well as the seem to do some of the Games Workshop stuff, it looked fairly decent so it might be fun. They didn’t have a photography society which I thought was odd I would have thought that would have been popular.

Anyway I suppose I should go and attempt to be sociable with my flatmates and everyone else in the immediate block of halls or else they might think I’m weird or a loser and it’s a bit early to let them in on the truth.

I almost can’t believe that by this time in two weeks time I will have moved in to my university halls of residence. It’s a strange thought because at one stage not all that long ago I thought I didn’t want to go to university, I thought that I would be better off trying to find work. Of course as events unfolded I came to see that I maybe had jumped the gun on that thought process. For instance I realise I was not in a good frame of mind and that I should try to get better mentally whilst trying to rectify the damage done.

Now that the dust has settled and it’s all sorted just about, it feels good that things are moving forward again and on a path that I want to travel down. I feel a lot better than I did a few months ago and I can actually say I’m the happiest I’ve been in months.

I’m going on holiday to Lanzarote tomorrow so that’s something to look forward to. It’ll be nice to have some time away with my dad and younger siblings before we go our separate ways. That does mean I won’t be doing any blogging this week but it does mean when I get back I’ll have something interesting to talk about.