I mentioned earlier that when kids books were bunched together into one category, serious and funny, good and bad alike, I used to make my reading decisions based on the weirdest titles I could find. Based on what showed up in the latest bin, if I were 9 today I would be happy indeed.


If I had seen a book called "The Obnoxious Jerks," I would have been all over that. It was printed in 1984. Where was it hiding?

Proving once again how boring adult books are in comparison, the best title I've found in over a year of digging through bins is this one:

That's after sorting through thousands of titles. And the inside isn't even that interesting.

I've seen a lot of romance novel covers. This one's my favorite.

This one is very British. I mean very, very British. I mean that it's borderline this:

If you live in the UK you likely already know who this author is -- there are eight more. None of the other titles make sense either, but the first one, "Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging" sounds familiar. That's because it was made into a movie. "Full-Frontal" was changed to "Perfect" and said movie was broadcast in the US on Nickelodeon.

Maybe the movie was toned down a smidge, because the contents of this book seemed pretty adult to me. At least, I think they were -- I didn't understand half the words. She could have been talking about a scrotum or a parakeet or an umbrella on page 37; I couldn't tell either way. At any rate, if there's a sequel movie, I doubt Nick would be interested in running a film called "Girlfriend of a Sex God."

This product is typical of the offerings in your average Book Club Order Form. It's a kiddie version of FML; just things like "And then he saw me in my underwear like OMG!!!" You don't need this; the real thing is free and funnier.

The best way to write a novel based on a TV show is to pick a plot that the show itself wouldn't be able to do as well. Alex Mack turns herself into mercury and goes into a freezer, but gets frozen that way and only her friends can save her. Leaving the camera on a blob of ice for minutes upon minutes wouldn't work as an episode. But as a book, we can get into Alex's head and sense her feelings of helplessness and panic. Yes, I actually read this whole thing. It took about a half-hour, so why not? The 90's were all that.

It just occurred to me Sarah Connor could have stopped the T-1000 this way. The movie wouldn't have been very long though.

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