“This is not like I expected at all! We got totally lied to by our album covers.”

41. Damned – Chuck Palahniuk

I remember when this was being released and I heard that Palahniuk was going for some level of Judy Blume in Hell, which is right up my alley. And I definitely enjoyed this book more than the two exercises in fake language immersion that preceded it. There were a lot of fun bits in 13 year old Madison’s trip to hell and really, it seemed like her home life was terrible as the neglected child of two A-listers. She’s no Bill and Ted, but she sure is dark and funny for a not particularly teenagery teenager.

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Merricat’s Bogus Journey would be a pretty accurate shorthand for the time period in which liver cancer developed and killed her. She also would have beat Death at Battleship given the opportunity. Also, I would like a robot Merricat please. Westworld-level accuracy only, no storyline bullshit for her though.

52. Doomed

The consequences of missing curfew – one year as a ghost to figure things out for Madison. It’s like she’s grounded as a ghost. Very teen. But Madison seems even less like an actual teen in this one. The thing is, a teen might have been a bad choice for the concept of satirizing The Divine Comedy, which might also be why this supposed trilogy has no last book. Or maybe it was replacing the epic poem format with blog posts. I know that when I decided to read The Divine Comedy while in between 6th and 7th grade, it was a bad idea. I read it, didn’t get a single reference and didn’t understand most of it because I wasn’t raised religiously and was not a frequent epic poem reader and also I was, um, 11, and then I went back to reading R.L. Stine and Foxtrot compilations to get my Summer Reading Program prizes. I believe I chose the cup with the library logo and a Pink Floyd cassingle of whatever the single was off of The Division Bell. Did I like it? No. I’m actually not a Pink Floyd person. I tried. I am not cool with most prog, no matter how supposedly cool that prog is. Anyway, this one was not as “fun” as Damned, but it’s supposed to be the middle of a trilogy, so it wouldn’t be. The last book is…in purgatory?

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The only start of the apocalypse I’ll accept is the one where guinea pigs get all huge like in the South Park episodes “Pandemic” and “Pandemic 2: The Startling,” it’s the best one. Especially if Merricat got to be a guinea bee.