Folger Book Club: Warm Bodies
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet gets a zombie makeover in our October book club discussion.
Booking and details
Dates Thu, Oct 5, 2023, 6:30pm
Tickets Free, Registration required
Duration 6:30pm - 8:00pm (ET)
Our October 2023 Pick
Warm Bodies
by Isaac Marion
In Warm Bodies, Isaac Marion’s New York Times bestselling novel that inspired a major film, a zombie returns to humanity through an unlikely encounter with love.
“R” is having a no-life crisis–he is a zombie. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he is a little different from his fellow Dead. He may occasionally eat people, but he’d rather be riding abandoned airport escalators, listening to Sinatra in the cozy 747 he calls home, or collecting souvenirs from the ruins of civilization.
And then he meets a girl.
First as his captive, then his reluctant house guest, Julie is a blast of living color in R’s gray landscape, and something inside him begins to bloom. He doesn’t want to eat this girl–although she looks delicious–he wants to protect her. But their unlikely bond will cause ripples they can’t imagine, and their hopeless world won’t change without a fight.
Why did we choose this?
The Folger Shakespeare Library’s collection explores not only Shakespeare’s life and works, but also the plays’ historical context, source material, critical and performance histories, and the ways in which they inspire and are adapted by contemporary novelists.
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most enduring—and adaptable—plays. Marion’s novel sets the tale within a zombie dystopia, leading to a fun, irreverent horror version of the classic story of star-crossed lovers, demonstrating the creativity that can be brought to reinterpreting Shakespeare’s work. Plus, it’s a great read for Halloween!
About the Book Club
Our informal Book Club is free and open to all. Our picks range from historical fiction to adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, encompassing a wide variety of genres—all sourced from a different local, independent bookstore partner each month.
Each session begins with a guest speaker exploring that month’s pick and highlighting items from the Folger collection related to the plot and themes of the novel. After the presentation, participants will be broken into smaller groups for breakout discussions, moderated by a team of staff and volunteers.
Content transparency
Warm Bodies includes references to potentially sensitive subjects. Expand below for a full list of content.
- Suicide
- Self-harm
- Gore
- Fatphobia
- Drug/alcohol use and abuse
Guest Speaker
Kathleen Miller
Kathleen Miller is a Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Belfast. After receiving her Ph.D. in English literature and book history from Trinity College Dublin, she published The Literary Culture of Plague in Early Modern England (2016) and co-edited Dublin: Renaissance City of Literature (2017). She is completing her second monograph, on women’s plague writing in early modern England, as well as revising an edited volume on medicine and religion in the trans-Atlantic world, each based on research completed during the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship she held at the University of Toronto and Queen’s University Belfast.
This month, we are excited to partner again with Bridge Street Books, a neighborhood bookstore with an international reputation.
Occupying a brick townhouse on Pennsylvania Ave for 40 years, Bridge Street Books stocks a wide selection of trade, university, and small press publications. They’ve got your bestsellers too! Learn more at bridgestreetbooks.com. The storefront is open from 11AM-9PM Mon-Sat and 12-9PM Sunday. You can also order directly at https://bookshop.org/shop/bridgestreetbooks, or download the audiobook version of this title from https://libro.fm/bridgestreetbooks.
We would like to thank the following organizations for their generous support of this program
