Top Five: Diary Books

There’s something special, intimate, and slightly voyeuristic about reading a first-person diary book. It feels at once exhilarating and slightly dangerous. My new book, a funny memoir very loosely inspired by some journal entries I wrote at age 12 (about an ill-fated seventh grade coach trip), brings readers into the after-life of Adam Meltzer, a twelve-year-old boy with OCD who dies, and then comes back as a zombie to solve his own murder. 

 

I wanted to write it in diary format because of how important those first days must be to a sentient zombie; waking from the dead and (sometimes painfully, but always funnily) readjusting to a world that’s moved on without him.

 

This on-the-money tweenage tale of injustice is probably my major literary touchstone for Adam Meltzer’s woes. It’s a hilariously relatable tale of the unstoppable wrath of a younger brother. I read it when I was a nothing in fourth grade (and had an unstoppable younger brother) and it was like Judy Blume had CCTV in my house. A classic!

 

Fiction that reads like non-fiction – swap Zombie for SARS and it’s terrifyingly plausible. What shakes you to the core in this book is not the zombies, but the human reaction (and sometimes inaction). Politics, ego, and saving face all get in the way of mounting a credible response to the looming apocalypse; as explored in a novel that reads like the 9/11 commission report.

 

Dual perspective diary of a supervillain staging a comeback and the superhero determined to stop him. This is a must-read for anyone interested in comic books and super hero mythology and is LOL on every page. Author Grossman made the super villain loveable years before Despicable Me or MegaMind attempted it at the cinema.

 

The other Jeff  has done something truly remarkable - getting reluctant reader boys into books in a big way. By bridging the gap between graphic novel and prose novel, Kinney gives young readers a bridge into books. Whereas JK Rowling’s wizards got a generation reading a generation ago, Kinney’s doing it today by making them laugh.

 

The literary tie-in to David Lynch’s seminal TV show reveals murder victim Laura Palmer’s innermost thoughts and dangerous acquaintances.  In the days before every cable channel made high-quality drama, American networkABC created a cultural phenomenon with just one hour of weirdness a week. Sure, Laura Palmer’s diary was a moneymaking TV tie-in, but since it was an integral prop in the show, it let the viewing public (through a book) inside the victim’s life and made for richer viewing.