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!
The summer before I started college is when I discovered Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. I was supposed to be studying for finals, but decided to read Voyager instead. I rationalized that I was reading in the bathtub, therefore I was still bathing, which is necessary and as long as I was in the bathtub I wasn’t avoiding studying. I told myself that I could study in the morning before actually leaving to take the final. Fast forward to restless, panic dream-filled sleep (once I finally went to sleep) & frantic cramming before taking one of my finals the next day. This was repeated over the course of that entire semester’s finals!
I am a proud member of the Bad Decisions Book Club — in fact, I made one of those bad decisions just last week. I am the adult programming associate for the library and am in charge of the book club (which includes coming up with the questions, researching the book and author,and moderating the discussion). Due to the fact that I was ill in March, I did not read the title for that month. So, for April’s meeting we needed to discuss both March and April’s titles. Throughout the month did I pick up either title and start reading? NO. Instead, I re-read a number of favorite titles and then read some new titles that showed up on my Kindle. I finally read both books the day before the meeting!
I also forgot to add that I have stayed up all night reading not only new books that I have been waiting for but also book club titles that I really did not want to read.
I have never called off work due to the fact of staying up all night to read, but I have considered on more than once scheduling myself off on a day when I knew a new title by a favorite author was due.
Pretty sure I’Ve been a core member of this club for the last couple decades. I’ve been making poor late night reading decisions since Jr high.the real issue is when you are up too late reading a book that isn’t even that good, but hood enough to keep you going. I also excel at reading books that I shouldn’t be reading right now and ignoring the books I need to read. The struggle is real.
Excedrin! All these years I’ve mainlined coffee but never thought of Excedrin (sleep deprivation affects cognitive function).
The worst part is when traveling. After a cross country flight – 5 hours of uninterrupted reading time! – the logical thing to do would be to go to sleep, especially since the sales team wants to meet at 8am (which is 5am in my home time). But really, it’s only 9pm in my home time, and I haven’t really done anything all day…so why not just one more chapter? And another. And oh look, it’s 3am, and I have to get up in 4 hours. But I’m in an unfamiliar bed, and it’s hard to get to sleep…maybe one more chapter?
Fortunately I can usually blame my bloodshot eyes on the timezone change, not my late night reading binge.
Tonight is shaping up to be a “bad decision” night. I’m at 68% and at the point where I need to know who the killer is and what’s going to happen. At least I don’t have to be at work until noon tomorrow.
As a child I used to read under at the covers with a torch which I kept under the pillow. I have always slept with the door open which led to the danger of parental detection and torch confiscation. Now I stand in the ensuite after cleaning my teeth with the door closed to avoid disturbing my husband. This gives me the (erroneous) feeling that I am about to go to bed as opposed to just sitting in the living room.
I know the book will still be there in the morning and I am not even working most days at the moment but only my husband grumbling eventually stops me. Sometimes he even grumbles at me to come to bed when I already have!!
I bought Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix at 5am on release day on my way to work.
I read it before starting, on my break, whilst walking home, before dinner (not during as my mum wouldn’t allow reading at the table) then straight through until I finished the book at 3am.
I wept for a while then went to work again at 6!
@GretchenA: I do the same thing. I *should* be asleep, but it’s dark and quiet and I have a blanket over my head and I can read for hours uninterrupted while the plane does its thing. I have fond reading memories of long, long flights reading one book and starting another for five or six hours straight.
I’ve been meaning to go to bed before midnight all week… only to fail miserably at shutting my eyes before 3 a.m. Why do I insist of reading “just a few” pages before bedtime? Why?!!!
Also, why do only I figure out what I want to read next at night? During the day I’m all “eh, whatever” but at night I develop an intense fascination for a specific book. >:(
Hello, my name is Marlene and I am a biblioholic. It is great to meet my sisters-in-reading-under-the-covers!
One of the ways I decide to give a book an A+ review is whether it kept me up until 4 am. Or even the occasional 5 am. I’m usually toast the next day.
The entire Anne Bishop Others series did me in. I kept telling myself that I didn’t have space to stick in the review until next month, but read three in one lovely binge weekend because I just couldn’t stop myself.
This was really bad when I lived in Alaska. In the summers it never gets dark. In the winter it gets dark in mid-afternoon. Denial is SO EASY!
I was ten when I joined the bad decisions book club… The first book to make me a member was Watership Down. I read all night and then went to school in the morning… I’ll never forget being up and not quite done with the book when my dad came to wake me up. Since that time, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve made bad decisions when it comes to reading over doing other things I should really be doing.
This past week I had two pull two all nighters to finish papers that I was supposed to be working on and instead read the entire Maiden Lane series…
My bad decision started in primary school. If my dad took me to the library on a week night and the pickings were *really* good, I’d read until he went to bed. Wait a few minutes for him to fall asleep and then get up switch on my light and read all through the night. Those school days were bad. Adult me? Pretty much Elyse’s story minus the cat (I need a cat).
I came into this club as a legacy,my mothering being an English major and my father reading books like a dog eats bacon.
I started stealing the Anne of Green Gables books out of my mom’s room in elementary so I could find out what happened before she read the story to me that night. Mom said she was both proud and sad the day she found me with a pilfered copy of Anne of Avonlea in hand, my little elementary school eyes large as I cried that I just had to find out what happen! It meant that I had no problem reading books by myself, but also that she was no longer needed for bedtime stories except as a supplier.
It really came into full force in High School when I discovered Pratchett. I read Small Gods and then went to the library and checked out everything they had with his name on it. Once I finished a book I would then hand it off to my father, this led to late night meetings between the two of us in the darkened hallway outside my parents room where conversations like “Did you get to the Thing yet? What Thing? Oh you’ll know when you get to the Thing, don’t worry.” And their us trying to discuss said thing when he finally got to it without spoiling it for my brother who would get getting the books as soon as dad was through.
This has led to me buying my father books for his birthday etc that I want to read as I know he will send them to me when he is done.
However.
As I have started to read more romances (mostly thanks to this site) I have gotten increasingly shy about telling him what books I am reading. At Xmas this year he wanted to sync our kindles and I was like ‘yeah…about that…you are going to see some covers that you won’t be able to un-see.’
Now as an adult, or rather, now as I don’t have any adult supervision except my own, I have been known to read until the pale dawn creeps in under the curtains on the weekend and well into the dark of night during the week. I am guilty of the all the classics; the, just the end of the chapter, the I’m sure starting a book at 10pm will be fine, the I can read a whole series in a weekend that’s totally normal, the tea, toast, and cheese are a legit dinner and keeps one hand free for book holding, etc.
I look forward to more meetings of this book club, in the depths of the night as we pass each other in the hallway to refill our tea or check on the kids or let the dog out. We can talk about the Thing, don’t worry you’ll know it when you get to it.
I can produce my 2nd or 3rd grade report card which has a comment from the teacher “Karin often fails to pay attention in class because she has her head in a book”. But I had no idea the BDBC was so big because I don’t know any members in meatspace!
The one thing that really pisses off my husband is when I put something on the stove to cook and then start reading. Next thing I know there is a burning smell in the house. I’ve boiled a tea kettle dry. The sad thing is, I’m actually an excellent cook, as long as I don’t wander out of the kitchen and start reading something.
Just did this last night. I finished a novel, liked it so much I purchased the next in the series, liked it so much I stayed up reading and reading long past the time my body told me to go to bed. Well, my body, demanding, pushy thing that it is, took over and I fell asleep in the recliner. I awoke at some time, only long enough to turn off the classical music coming from the TV and went back to sleep until the cats, who had been sleeping in my lap decided to vigorously groom each other. Staggered into bed about 3:40 AM, awoke a little but later to realize I’d fallen asleep with the bedroom light still on. Back to sleep.
I’m so in the club
This is absolutely my life. I like to read on the train to work. That’s totally fine. The problem is if I read on the train home from work and CONTINUE to read at home because I can’t put it down. Then I neglect making dinner or doing chores and I put off showering. And then I am sad (and maybe a little smelly) the next day.
I’ve been this way since I was a wee one. My mom would send me to bed. And to avoid her seeing the light coming from my bedroom, I would read in my closet.
I got told off one day for reading while crossing the road (on the walk signal at the traffic lights – and I had checked for no cars) by the deputy principal in charge of the infants classes at my daughter’s primary school. My daughter was in high school at the time and we were no where near the primary school. I regularly read while I walk between the carpark and work but not usually while I am crossing the road any more.
I felt like you were writing the story of my life!! Everything said – from ignoring the clock hoping that if I dont look at it, it will not be so late, to trying to remember how much PTO I have left and what excuse I have, to take a day off because I am zombified the next morning … this is me. Of late however, with the years creeping up, I find my body refuses to follow my brain in continuing to read past 2:00 – 3:00 a.m. and have fallen asleep while holding the book. The next day – I swear to myself I am never going to do this again and yet – I too find some book I bought on sale in the dusty corner of my kindle and the vicious cycle starts again.
Would you believe I have even resorted to having an alarm set in the night to remind me to stop the damn reading and get to sleep? Ahhh – but I never learn. I switch off my night alarm and continue reading because the world would come to an end if I didn’t get to the end, right?
I consider myself a fairly intelligent creature and yet, the day after my ‘bad decision’ I find myself seriously questioning that intelligence…!!
I didn’t mention the time I found Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series in high school, did I? I read The Clan of the Cave Bear over a weekend, The Valley of Horses over the next week (cursing school and responsibilities), The Mammoth Hunters over the next weekend, and The Plains of Passage over the second week. I emerged with a series hangover, a backlog of schoolwork, and craving more. (I mostly learned my lesson about series binging—concentrate on shorter books when there are responsibilities to be handled!)
Oh dearie me… I once again proved my credentials to belong to this club by staying up until 3:30AM to read The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie by Jennifer Ashley which I loved loved loved.