“Dammit, that’s not an ending!” exclaimed Bartholemew, throwing his copy of Isaac Asimov’s “Second Foundation” across the room. It landed on a cat, who screamed.
“This can’t be the ending!” continued Bartholemew. “And it’s for nerds, so I can’t call up one of my friends on the bowling team and tell them ‘The Circle Has No End’ whaddya think of that, eh?”
He rolled over and tried to make peace with the cat. “Here, Carnissa,” he cooed to the feline. “You can take this book and shred it and pee on it, just like you did with “The Robots of Dawn”. Carnissa purred. Very soon, the apartment would smell like piss.
“I know, “Robots” was a hard book for me, too, since I’m Demisexual, as you well know, and all the characters are horny.” The cat rolled herself into a ball and started licking various hard-to-read places. “But, because I’m also a masochist, I’m into reading things that showcase pleasures I don’t personally indulge in.” Carnissa rolled over, cascading her hair all over the futon.
“Come to think of it, there was that year when I was a born-again Christian and I gave up EVERYTHING for Lent.”
Carnissa remembered. She had been put up for adoption, for a week, until Bartholemew read an article on “theodicy” and decided that if there was Evil, giving up good things only made it worse. Boy and cat were reunited. Also, Bartholomew had felt guilty, so he let Carnissa pick the books he would be reading. As a penance.
Bartholomew may have suspected that Carnissa only cared about the cover illustrations. If he had any children’s pop-up books, those would probably have been even more interesting. For both of them. Now, Bartholomew was about to commit himself to another huge book. He brought out the two choices for his judge to inspect. That cat refused to consider “The Name of the Rose”, but seemed very excited by “The Goldfinch”.
Bartholemew checked the page count. “775 fucking pages! Jesus Christ on a hot cross bun!” Carnissa’s claws were out before you could say “A Funny Thing Happened On The Road To Emmaus”. Bowing and apologizing profusely, Bartholemew slunk off to find a band aid and some antiseptic. Good thing he had a week off. Reading books. Can’t beat it!