Ever since I was old enough to read on my own, I’ve been making terrible decisions regarding books and basic time management. I’m normally a fairly organized and responsible person. I file my taxes on time. My library books are never overdue. My homework was never late.
Add books to the mix, though, and suddenly I decide to do things that Future Elyse will seriously regret, hence my founding of The Bad Decisions Book Club.
Here’s a few examples of what it means to belong to this esteemed club:
I have to read four books for work in a week’s timespan, so naturally I ignore all those books and pick up something entirely different instead. Usually this book has been sitting in the dusty corners of my Kindle, a forgotten backlist title I bought on sale, but suddenly I have to read it RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
Another example would be having my family come over for the holidays which necessitates cleaning and cooking and showering–but sitting down to read instead.
But most often it goes like this:
I decide to start a new book at 11:30 at night, just to read a few pages. At this point I’m in my denial phase of poor reading choices, but Future Elyse is waving at me through the time space continuum, giving me the finger, because she knows how this ends. She’s seen this before. It ends in bitter tears.
By 1:30 a.m. my neck hurts and my eyes are tired, and we’re now deeply into the negotiation phase of things. I will put the book down after this chapter, I can still totally go to work tomorrow if I skip a shower, brush my teeth in the car, wear the pants I had on yesterday and get a venti flat white from Starbucks. We can still make this happen.
Now it’s 3 a.m. and I know Future Elyse is gonna be REALLY MAD. Somewhere in my exhausted brain I’m trying to math but it doesn’t work out. There’s no point in even going to bed now, right? Three hours of sleep is somehow worse than no hours of sleep.
I start planning out how I’m going to survive the next day: I can finish the book, shower, brush my teeth at home like a normal person, and wear new pants. I will mainline espresso and Diet Coke all day, adding in Excedrin as needed.
By noon, I figure the nausea will kick in. That’s why I have Saltines in my desk. I can cancel my two afternoon meetings and if my staff ask me any questions I’ll just say “Sure,” and pray that covers it. If they stare at me I’ll follow it up with, “What do you think you should do?” so it looks like mentoring.
Now it’s 3:30 a.m. and I realize my plan is terrible and why the hell do I even do this, what is wrong with me. I go downstairs and cry into the cat for fifteen minutes which REALLY upsets the cat, quite frankly. Since I’m tired and overly emotional, I turn to my comfort activity–reading.
By 5:00 a.m. I’m contemplating calling into work with diarrhea. No one EVER questions diarrhea.
By 5:30 I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this is not the responsible thing to do.
6:00 a.m.: MOTHER FUCKER.
Inevitably I go to work having finished the book and generally feeling like shit. People do a double take when I walk by and ask if I’m anemic again. I give Past Elyse the finger.
Honestly, though, I know I’ll never learn my lesson and I’ll do it again.
What about you? Are you a member of The Bad Decisions Book Club? What reading choice do you totally (not) regret?
NB: Sarah has Bad Decisions Book Club stickers – the purple circles above with our tent of reading and shame. She’ll be giving out stickers at random to folks who comment until Friday 6 May (void where prohibited, must be over 18, etc etc), so don’t be shy about sharing your Bad Decisions Book Club shame!
NBx2: By request from PamG, there are Bad Decisions Book Club t-shirts to be had! You can choose a chest/pocket logo version or a large logo version.
NBx3! By further request: STICKERS for purchase!
Bathtub reading in the mornings = late for work again.
This was me with the Highwayman after I finally got my hands on it! And sweet lord there’s a sequel. Pray for me!
Every. Single. Time!
I’ve been a member of the club since I was ten – the classic flashlight-under-the-covers, novel-hidden-inside-a-textbook, reading-in-the-bathroom type of member. It came to the point where my parents would lock away my books for a month before my exams, because they knew I’d be ‘distracted’. My Harry Potter books, which I would insatiably re-read, re-re-read, and read all over again – were covertly removed and spent about a year in my dad’s office, because he KNEW that I’d hunt them down if they were anywhere inside my house!
Now that I am a responsible adult living on my own, with nobody checking up on me, it’s obviously gotten a lot worse. I stay up late in the night, frantically reading, and tbh, I don’t even regret it that much in the morning.
So glad I’m part of something bigger than myself! Best book club ever!
Oh yeah, the headache, the nausea, the need to hide under my desk for the day after a night of reading “just one more chapter”. My husband has given me many a dirty look as he woke up from a sound sleep to find me reading way past my bedtime.
I read a book recently, I think it was Nora’s most recent, and what struck me was the reading pile by the bed was just “old favorites” because the hero/heroine could not read a new book when going to bed. I definitely have that problem.
Yes. Yes indeed. I too succumbed with Laura Ingalls Wilder in 3rd grade with a Halloween Jack ‘o’ Lantern flashlight. Now it’s… I’ll be fine to start this book at 10pm. It’ll be fine I’m going to bed at 3am. The 3yo is nearly self-sufficient. Insta-buy on ereaders is my downfall.
“It’s so late – I’ll just read a few sentences of the next chapter”. Yeah, right. Then I’m sucked in until the NEXT chapter comes along. And another bad habit I seem to have started is to pretend I’m not going to read any more, so I page ahead kind of randomly and read bits and pieces until I realize I’m totally spoiling the story. Then I go to bed berating myself yet again.
Fortunately by the next day I can go back and pick up where I really should have left off, because I was so tired it’s all a blur anyway…
I felt like I was reading my own diary; well said!
More than 3 hours of sleep each night is overrated.
My worst decisions are made when I have a day off during the week. I get excited that I have off the next day and it feels like a Friday night. So I party by reading until the wee hours of the morning (because I do what I want) and my day off in which I was going to do fun and exciting things ends up with me wandering around a supermarket zombie like until I cancel all my other ambitious plans and take a nap.
I have off tomorrow and am stoked about being able to stay up late and read! I never learn.
My mother once tried to suggest I stop in the middle of a chapter to avoid the inevitable end of chapter cliff hangers. Guess how well that went over? Still read all night way too offer. I have also been known to trip over curbs and trash cans. I know I can barely walk safely, so why does current Anne think walking and reading at the same time is a good idea?
I seem to remember that I always got caught reading in the middle of the night as a kid. I am a Braille reader, or at least was more of one before I discovered computers, so it’s not like anyone could see a light. Maybe that’s the reason though? Lol.
Charter member here. In high school, I used to put a folded towel against the bottom of my bedroom door so my parents couldn’t see the light underneath while I stayed up to read. Twenty-five years later, I still routinely go to bed much, much later than I should, for the same reason.
And if I have books A, B, and C checked out of the library, and I just bought new books D, E, and F, the book I absolutely, without fail, must read right now is book Z. No other book will do.
Uhhh. I totally did this last night? And I have to say, between 130 and 3 you definitely believe you’ll stop any chapter. And then the birds are chirping outside but you’re in denial that the sky is lightening. Past Beth makes terrible decisions. Where’s the coffee?
(I won’t even pretend this won’t happen again)
Ohhh, so many bad decisions.
This morning I lay on the stripped bed, sheets in a pile for the laundry, book in hand.
It’s Monday.
I’m afraid I’m beginning a week of bad decisions…
This! I am also a member of the club…I’m pretty sure I added a good year or two to my graduate school experience because I couldn’t put down All The Novels when I was supposed to be studying for comprehensive exams. I’m also pretty sure that my Kindle Fire is aiding and abetting my reading all night by screwing up my circadian rhythm. That’s the line I’m going with, anyway 🙂
I remember when they produced Stephen King’s It for TV (1990). Tim Curry as Pennywise. It was Event TV. I was in my first year of college and everyone was gathered around the big TV in the dorm to watch. I was one of the few who had read the book. Mid-terms were in full swing at the time, but that did not stop me from doing a complete re-read of the book.
A re-read. Of a 1000+ page book. Instead of studying. Yeah, my awesome bad decisions go way back.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED that I graduated high school with decent grades because I used to start books as I was getting into bed the night before a school day. I don’t have the nighttime problem anymore, but I do get up at 7am, pick up a book while I drink my morning coffee and then have to run my daily 10:45 meeting over the phone because I didn’t make it to the office in time.
I’ve been a member probably since I was able to get through chapter books. Even now, I’ve had to get one of my roommates to hide my kindle whenever there’s a deadline for school. One particularly bad decision was when the last Harry Potter book came out, and I stayed up reading it all night…right before being in 2 performances of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. That was not a fun Saturday.
As a senior member of Ye Olde Pharts Book Club, I can guaran-damn-tee you that I more than qualify for The Bad Decisions Book Club 50 times over. Even with my advanced case of CRS (Can’t Remember Shit), I remember a beach vacation when our 4 demon-spawn were little. One night after the spawn were put to bed, I picked up SON OF THE MORNING by Linda Howard. Bad decision (not). Time Travel, Highlander, Kilts, murder mystery, thriller, pant-out-loud sexy times. I finished it at 5 am. The demon spawn woke up at 6:30 am. I then spent the day with small loud people… in the bright sun… in the baking heat… with sand and sunblock all over me. But damned if that book isn’t still on my short list of all time favorite books!
I should be a charter member of the Bad Decisions Book Club – the post told the story of my life.
I’m all about acquiring books when I already have way more to read than I should have. I’m better about starting to read books late at night these days – but that’s only because I work crazy shifts and know I need my sleep. That said I only managed 3 hours sleep the other night because I was so sucked into Fangirl I lost track of time and the fact that it was midnight and I had to get up at 3.50am to get my train to work.
I’ve just adopted a 50 pages and if I don’t like it then quit it policy to try and get the pile of books next to my seat down – because it’s currently a little bookshelf and 4 piles of books hidden behind the sofa arm – some of which have started interfering with the curtains…
I don’t generally start a new book right before bed, learned that lesson, but i have a variation – DO NOT read the horror novel after 5 pm, don’t do it. Even if I set it down at a reasonable time, say 8 p.m., I keep starting awake convinced that I and the guard cat are about to be slaughtered by whatever eldritch horror I’ve been reading about. No amount of reading Susan Eliz Phillips after stopping the horror novel is going to help.
My other very, very bad decision revolves around book buying. I fall over books on the floor, my husband rolls his eyes when the Amazon truck rolls down our street, I have books in the trunk of my car so I repeatedly tell myself, no more books, no more books and then wham somebody posts a review and my finger travel son its own and hits the buy button. Hmmmm maybe it’s possessed from those horror novels….
I play the “just checking to see if a new book downloaded on my Kindle” game. At midnight. You know, just in case.
Once again the smart bitches posts an article that channels my thoughts.
Im also a life long member going back to when I was 9-10 years old. My flaslights were confiscated and for a while my father habitually turned the switch in the breakerbox to cut out all electricity to my room.
Nowdays I try to limit night time reading, but my achilles heel is to either re-read my just finnished novel back to back or having read a new novel from an author to go back and re-read anything they previously published.
I refuse to claim membership in The Bad Decisions Book Club because I REGRET NOTHING!
I don’t regret staying inside to read instead of going outdoors to play. I started school a year early because of my reading skills and I’ve never looked back.
I don’t regret reading Edgar Allan Poe as a child and becoming so afraid that I had to place the book in the hallway every night. (I continued to read it, but just couldn’t sleep with it in the room.) He still scares me, but I aced a later Poe course.
I don’t regret setting the bed on fire as a teenager when I put a table lamp under the hand-crocheted afghans so I could read at night. (I hid the blackened remains in my closet and tried to cover the stench with copious amounts of L’Air du Temps–the smell of which I despise to this day.) But I should have been allowed to stay up and read!
I don’t regret getting locked in the city’s main public library at night because I was so absorbed that I missed the closing call. It all worked out.
I don’t regret reading now-forgotten books when I should have been studying for college finals. I learned valuable “pantsing” skills that I still employ decades later.
I don’t regret staying up all night to read when I have to go into work early–something that still occurs at least several times a week. (*Cough* last night) That just means that all-nighters (for work or for personal reasons) are a total snap for me. Your international flight is arriving at 3 AM? No prob, I’ll be there.
I don’t regret anything I’ve read. Sure, I’ve read bad books. And I’ve read books that I can’t remember reading. But I don’t regret a single one.
I scoff at your club.
Here’s a variation: back in the B.E. (Before E-readers) I used to pack a carefully selected stack of books to take on vacation, or camp, or Grandmother’s–savage places where there Might Not Be Books. Titles I’d put off reading for just that purpose. Come vacation time, if there were other books anywhere around, I would HAVE to read those books, because, you know, I might never see them again (I think this might be a major contributor to HABO requests.)
I also can’t believe I’m the only one who expands their Just-One-More syndrome to include just-one-more-stitch and just-until-the-next-commercial.
my longtime massage therapist was always complaining about how I sit – ok lay – down, read an entire book and emerge blinking a few hours later, having forgotten my body existed the entire time. And ya know I do this practically daily. She’d say, “you have to move every hour. Please, just move.”
So when I got all that insurance money from a massive house fire, I delightedly tossed the old junky furniture and bought myself not one but three velvet sofas positioned strategically throughout the house. When I bragged to her now I can set an alarm, jump up, and move to the next sofa mid-book, she said weakly, “that’s not exactly what I meant.”
P.s. Yes I do go to the gym nearly daily as well, just not mid-book.
You might think I would be immune to this, since i read very very quickly. Thank goodness I have slightly more self-control with sweets!
I found myself unexpectedly initiated into the club on a family trip when I was 13 after I picked up a Brides of Durango paperback that was tucked under some other books on the night stand of my Granny’s guest bedroom. I read it cover to cover overnight, sure I wasn’t supposed to be reading something so risqué and worried I wouldn’t make it through Thanksgiving the following day without it being obvious. I was hooked.
Oh yes! I think I signed up for the lifetime membership.
I am a Lifelong Member! It wasn’t so bad when I was a shift-worker, as I had time (so much time!) to read. But now, with regular, day-time hours, it’s harder to stop and all of a sudden it’s midnight and I have to up in six hours.
I cannot start a new book at bedtime, because I will stay up to read the whole thing. But, it’s vital that I read it all because what if the ink apocalypse happens and all the words disappear from the pages before I’ve finished the story? That would be tragic, so I stay up and read. Every. Time. No apocalypse yet, but you can never be sure.
I’ve actually uttered the words to my husband, “The new Courtney Milan is out. I’ll pretty much be running on Excedrin tomorrow.”
This is a commonplace event with me…about once a month I get a book that is either PHENOMENAL or shows the potential to be, and voila, I lose all respect for the tasks looming before me as I stay up till four to finish Mariana or Beguilment or Eleanor & Park (for the third time, seriously, if I know how it ends, why do i stay UP to finish it???)
I am definitely a member of this club! On top of reading at all hours if the night and settling down to a nice reading session instead of a much needed grading session, I also make the bad decision ( who am I kidding, it is a great decision) of buying more books than I can possibly read in my lifetime.
I shared a room with my sister. In order to read without waking her up I moved my bed just a bit away from the wall, and would plug my lamp in between the wall and my bed (no flashlight) and read under the covers that way. It was one of those bendy lamps , so I would bend it toward the floor so the light couldn’t be seen. Also, the bathroom could only be reached through our bedroom, so I also has to keep an ear out for parents. My dad found it one night and removed it while I pretended to be asleep. He wasn’t fooled… And told me that the lamp could catch my bedding on fire. It was an old lamp. He was probably right…
I read this, and I had to show it to my brother, who started quoting the parts he liked and identified with.
Yes, he read the entire thing out loud.
A reading choice I do not regret…
Oh God, I can’t recall a single book I’ve read over two-hundred pages that hasn’t been subjected to this.
Not that it has to be two-hundred pages, I have a vivid memory of arguing for one more chapter with my mom while reading the Sweet Valley Kids book where the hamster went missing.
So I started skipping the end pages of chapter. If I don’t finish the chapter, it doesn’t count, right?
And fanfics. I remember this particular time where I decided to read the first chapter of episode eight of this saga. “It’s over 300K words, brain, I just want to know who is getting in trouble this time.”
Thank God Internet flat out stopped working at 6 AM.
And then, three months later, I re-read the entire thing and it happened again.
(Just in case, it’s called Sipahigri, and it’s a fic of the Real Adventures of Johnny Quest)
My BDBC meets in a different location than everyone else’s – instead of my bed when it’s time to sleep, it’s in the bathtub in the morning when I need to be getting ready for work. I always have an oldie-but-a-goodie paperback book hanging out on a stool next to my tub so that I can read a chapter or two while I have a short soak. The problem is that my chapter or two turns into three or four & before you know it, I’m running super late & my husband is making my breakfast & packing my tote bag for me while I throw on clothes because I got caught up in one of my favorite stories yet again.
Yup,all of that is familiar. I’m currently in the middle of one. I got home at 6:30pm. I promised myself 30 mins of reading then I would cook dinner, wash my hair, do chores. It’s now 9pm. I haven’t left the couch. I have curly hair and it’s a pain to dry. I know this. I know that it takes me 2 hours to dry it before I can go to sleep. I still haven’t moved. My last negotiation to myself was 9:15…thats when I’ll get up and do stuff….
Yep. Been a member since elementary school. I got in big trouble in fourth hrade because I fell asleep in school several times and the teachers called and asked my mom if I’d been eating enough (I was pretty scrawny despite eating like a horse when I got the chance). Mom was LIVID about being questioned as a potentially neglectful parent because I’d been pulling all-nighters reading. Sadly, I still haven’t learned my lesson and often do the book hangover at work routine. I just can’t help myself.
All the time…I read pretty fast so I will finish a book at 10:30 which is to early to go to bed so I’ll start another with the promise of only reading a few chapters only to be up until the wee hours of the morning. The next day I swear that will be that last time only to repeat it in a couple of days.