When I started reading World War Z, it was in eBook format. Sadly, I couldn’t find my paperback copy that I own (which included the zombie survival guide with it!), so I was trapped with borrowing the eBook from the library for the time being. It was interesting to say the least since I was expecting something akin to the film or at least holds a little of the film they claimed was based on the book. Nothing. Not a single glimpse of it was like the book.
Then again, I don’t think I would have liked them to do the book in a film format. It’s all interviews between the narrator and people all over the world that experienced the war. Instead, a tv series one season-long focusing on the different characters might have done extremely well. Especially with the daughter and her family that go up into Northern Canada and stay there over the Winter and the pilot that may or may not have experienced an auditory hallucination.
About 25% through reading the eBook, I found myself unable to sit still long enough to read it properly and ended up downloading the audiobook to keep myself ahead of the game. At first, I dreaded this because I wasn’t sure how these interview-style chapters would sound like especially since I know most books only have one narrator.
Surprise! It was a full cast narrating the book. Instead of trying to ever go back and read in eBook format, I wanted to continue to devour the book as audio. It felt so much more realistic to listen to these characters talking compared to reading it. Like this actually happened and I’m listening to someone on a podcast recording about it all.
In a way, this reminded me of War of the Worlds, which perhaps is where they got some inspiration from. Make the statements feel as real as possible until the listener forgets that it’s fiction. Since I was also spending my days after work running/walking with the Zombies, Run! App, I was fully engrossed in the idea of a zombie apocalypse happening around me.
Honestly, it’s not the first time I’ve loved an audiobook. But it is a flip of the coin on if I enjoy reading the eBook/paperback, or the audiobook in the end. I’m glad I got to listen to the audiobook in this and will probably return not to listen to the whole thing, but to listen to certain interviews just like if it were a podcast interview.
So, would I say that audio is the best format? Not in every situation. Will I say for this book it was? Absolutely! It was written to be an audiobook from the start and that is something I really took from enjoying this book. The idea of audio is always a second thought for me, but keeping it more in the front of my mind lets me see how my book could develop into audio for others to enjoy on a much better scale than any other time.
