Bookgirl Announces the February Book Club and is Begging the Question 11.. 'Cause She Multitasks Like That.

The book club was so much fun, we're going back for more.
 
And I'm making a risky decision this time. I'm picking something I haven't read yet myself. I've heard good things about it, though.
 
If you all hate it, I'll publish my address. You can come over and throw rotten vegetables at me.
 
Or something.
 
This month's book is Incarceron by Catherine Fisher.
 
I'm not even going to try to explain it. Just read it. But first, watch the cool trailer.

Discussion to take place here on February 24th.
 
Okay, on to our question..
 
Any time I do something I'm not proud of, I'll look at the person I'm with and say, deadpan:
 
I'm going to hell.

So here's the scenario: It finally happened.
 
All your littering and snarky comments and putting recycling in the trash caught up with you. You're in hell. 
What does it look like?

Now at various times in my life, I've had different theories about this. In college I used to insist that if I ever ended up there, it would be an eternity spent in Kinko's during finals week.

I feel the same way about Home Depot, when I'm looking for something specific and it feels like all the men speak a language called "hardware" and my English isn't enough to navigate. Sometimes I walk in there and break into a cold sweat.

If I died and went to hell, there would be Celine Dion playing.

All. The. Time. Loudly.

The only person there to keep me company would be my ex-brother-in-law: the twitchy, bigoted one with ADHD who thinks the whole world owes him something, and who never... shuts... up.
 
It would smell like poop.
 
Forget hellfires. It would be cold, and windy, with driving rain, and i would be forced to wear wool, so I both itched AND smelled like wet dog.
 
If there were televisions, they would only play Dora the Explorer. Those long pauses every time she asks a question make me homicidal.
 
Either that or I'd just spend an eternity in my last job.
 

Which would be even worse.

Comments

[Polly]

This feels like a trick question but I'm going to assume we are well past the maturity level of torturing each other with pet peeves.

Clearly if I were in hell the soundtrack would alternate between George Michael's Careless Whisper and Roxanne by The Police.

The smell would be spagetti o's in the microwave. On that theme, possibly all of my food would be cooked in a microwave regularly used to heat spagetti o's. All of my cups would be tupperware and milk would have been between washings.

There would be no books.

It would alternately be too hot, too cold, too humid, too dry. Just like real life.

I would always be out of toilet paper, toothpaste, and milk.

I would be keeping company with people who only spoke in buzzwords and be forced to be polite during discussions about leveraging our synergies, in the complete disregard of the fact that they have no synergies or even brain cells, to leverage.

I would be forced to party plan for a mixed family and singles crowd with conflicting expectations and diverse food restrictions (no pork, no shellfish, no meat, no peanuts, no milk, no mixed mother-child combinations, no alcohol, no gluten, no sugar, no way).

[Pandora]

Hell on earth actually does exist for me.

It's the Lorikeet exhibit at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.
There are shrill noises, sporadic flying rodents diving for your face, the smell of fecal matter, and a 5 year who falsely reassures you that things are going to be okay because the flying demons have cute purple tongues.

Purple tongues don't make anything better.

[Bookgirl]

Pols, If we were including pet peeves, then there would also be loud chewers and screaming kids in my hell. And now I can't get the smell of microwaved Spaghetti O's out of my head. Ugh.

Pandora, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I'm traumatized just thinking about it.

[Danielle]

Boo! Incarceron is not available as an ebook. Boo!

I'm in love with ereading. It feels like an inconvenience to read a "real" book.

I have to buy it in a store, or wait for it to be mailed to my house. I have to wear my dorky headlamp if I want to read at night. :(

Why aren't all books available as ebooks, and furthermore, why are ebooks so poorly proofread? I found somewhere between a million and two million typos in my barnes and noble eReader copy of "Shades of Grey."

Sorry for the tangent. I guess hell for me is a world of minor inconvenience. :) A thousand paper cuts to cure my all over poison ivy. An eternal PowerPoint presentation with bad graphics and a speaker who reads exactly what is on the slide. Slow drivers in the left lane when there is plenty of room in the right. The wrong aspect ratio on a movie screen, or a lens slightly out of focus, with the volume just a little too quiet to be intelligible, teenagers are making out in the seat next to you, and some dude's cell phone rings. And he answers it! There are books in my hell, but only really poorly written self-help books that are also ridiculously patronizing, like "who moved my cheese." There is no landscaping (like India) and people just throw their trash wherever they want (also like India.) And to get there, you take a giant airplane filled with cigarette smoke, drunk Europeans, and crying babies who puke on you while their parents shrug their shoulders at you (and SMILE, like it's cute) in seats that don't recline, and are only 15 inches wide, and every seat is a middle seat. And the person next to you always gets the last "chicken" meal, so you are stuck with airline fish.

Just writing this is making me cranky. So I'm going to stop.

[Kit]

Hell would be enjoying the same activities and things I love so much on this earth until I tired of them and had nothing to replace them with. Even Pale Fire and Hamlet would probably bore after a hundred years with nothing else to read. Imagine listening to your favorite music so much you burn out on it, and having to listen to it again and again anyway ad infinitum. Even a song as great as Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" would get old...eventually.

[The Dol]

Danielle, I am SO with you on the e-reader. Love it, hate having to hold a regular book open anymore. Total annoyance. And what is *up* with the poor proofreading? Are they not getting the final edited version? I'm baffled by that, too.

I don't know what hell would be like for me. Eight more years of Bush? That would be awful.

[Danielle]

I went to an actual bookstore and actually bought incarceron. In hardcover, no less. At full retail. I must really love you, bookgirl.

Seriously, can we get these books on the ebook bandwagon, post-haste. Thanks for the props Dol. Books are so 2008.

[Alice]

Ive gotta go get my dogs from the groomer and then I'll be back but real quick - Danielle and Dol - what is wrong with you two? BAD E BOOKS BAD. I like a book I can hold in my hands and fill up my book shelf.

And Bookie - are you sending the book or should I go buy it?

[Bookgirl]

An article about why not all publishers release the e-book simultaneously with the printed edition:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2009-12-11-ebooks11_CV_N.htm

I know it sounds like corporate greed, but from an insider point of view, publishing works with profit margins that would make any other manufacturer or entertainment provider weep.

Danielle, yay!!!

As for e-books, when I had my Sony Reader I really liked it. Except for the fact that it was ALWAYS broken. I liked the experience of having 6 books with me at all times, just in case--Hank forbid--I finish one. For someone who typically is carrying around about a ream of paper, my back was grateful. It was great for work reading. But if I'm reading for pleasure, I want a book. Curling up in bed on a lazy Saturday morning with a nice romance "file" just isn't the same.

[Pandora]

I'm with Alice.

I'm old school and still like to carry a book around. It makes it easier to lend out.

[The Dol]

I haven't had any problems with my Kindle. I had to restart it the other day, and that's the first time in a year (and at least a hundred books) that it's even needed a restart.

I thought I was going to be all nostalgic about paper books, but they just don't compare. The story is what matters to me, so not having the bother of holding a book open--being able to read while I'm eating without even touching the book, for instance--is really nice.

I do (sort of) miss being able to pass a good book along, but not anywhere near enough to say that paper books are superior to my Kindle.

I heart, heart, HEART my Kindle.

[Danielle]

Word, Dol. Word.

My iPhone tells me bedtime stories. The pages turn themselves. It's backlit, I can change the font size, I can look up words in line. Real books just give me finger cramps. And seriously, my husband says that the headlamp I wear to read "real" books in bed is a turn off. Unless you have some kind of spelunking fetish, a headlamp is not going to get you going.

[Bookgirl]

Danielle, I keep picturing you with the headlamp and giggling. My mom has one too. Maybe that's really the secret to a happy marriage: headlamp.

[Chance]

Ok so this is one of the reasons I love this blog...all the great advice. If I get married I need to make sure I give my wife a headlamp and a vibrator...I think one with a quiet mode as not to disturb my beauty sleep.
My own personal hell is having to relive all of my most embarrassing moments over and over through the span of time. Like the time I was walking through a restaurant to go outside and once I got outside I felt a cool breeze and looked down to see my la-cu-ka-racha hanging out for all the world to see. (see earlier comments about not wearing underwear) Yeah that was a good one, or the time I went skinny dipping in the middle of the night in Lake Michigan with two women on my lust/love list. Well Lake Michigan never gets warm and you can guess what I didn't get to do that night. Or even worse the first time Jill and I hung out we went to a mutual friends house to drink and hang out in the hot tub. Well I happen to have had a tiny patch of hair that use to grow on the small of my back. (took care of that shit) So I went into this guys bathroom and 'borrowed' his razor to take care of this minor problem. Hey I was drunk... Little did I know that bathroom window is right next to the hot tub and when I came out to join Jill and company in the hot tub the guy (who also wanted Jill...should have let him have her) called me out on using his razor to shave my back...
So I am pretty sure I have now killed off any and all sex appeal. But those are nothing compared to...ah...I can't tell you that yet. P.S. R-Jack if you could please photoshop my double chin and make my man boobs more into pecks that would be great.

Pandora...in reference to your post..you are my nubian queen.

[Alice]

Ok, so Im going to have to google the Kindle before I judge, but you guys do make quite the argument for it. Do I have to hook it up to my computer to buy books though? And if you use the Kindle does this make your library useless? Oh, how I love my library.

And Chance - more snort laughing my drink through my nose.

[Pandora]

Chance, one of these days I'm going to be Queen of the Universe. Just wait.

[Polly]

@Pandora, you'll get your chance at Queen of the Universe, honey. I mean, eventually, I have to retire...

[Diosa]

@Alice - You do not have to hook the Kindle up to the computer. It has wi-fi, just to Amazon, though. I do love my Kindle and I use my library less, unfortunately. The Kindle's just too damn convenient.

Hell is definitely cold and everyone is forced to wear scratchy wool and Bush is in charge.

[Pandora]

Polly, I've already been practicing.

[Bookgirl]

Chance, You and I need an embarrassing-stories-off. It might end in a draw, but would be HILARIOUS for everyone who got to witness it. (See Begging the Question 2 for proof).