Allison Unfiltered: It's called "overkill." And I'm squatting in a big, stinky, pile of it.

My mother-in-law bought me a copy of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which I had actually blacklisted after finding out Oprah had just picked it for that corporate publishing brainwashing machine she calls her bookclub.

But dear MIL begged and begged for the chance to send it to me and even pointed me at reviews written by fellow Oprah-eschewers who said it was sooo good, good enough to ignore the Oprah sticker.

That's when I had a conversation with the bitch that lives in the left hemisphere of my brain, and said, "Hey, yo? Free book? And it's one you were going to read before Oprah picked it?"

"Yeah, but it'll probably have Oprah's name on it?!"

"So we can ask her to get a copy without her name on it? Hello? Selective mutism? One of your obsessions because of the connection you think it has to deaf studies? And, hey, she said it has DOGS in it!"

"Dogs?"

"Yeah, dogs! The cute, furry kind! Three of them."

"Er..."

"'C'mon. It's free. You're not pimping yourself out to Oprah by doing this, I promise."

"Dammit. Fine. Let her send you the effing book. One condition."

"What?"

"You deal with CK when he complains about how we have too many books and there's no room left in the bed for him."

"Nah, that won't be a problem. I'll just sic his mom on him if he does."

"Ah. I knew I liked being your bitch."

So I got the book a couple days later... and lo and behold, glory hallelujah -- the Oprah sticker peeled off quite painlessly.

And then I put it on top of the card stack that is currently my bookshelf, where it's sat untouched for a week now.

Blasphemy. Treason.

But geez. Not only do I read three or four books every three weeks for school, I've just joined one book club that met last Sunday, but I didn't go because Leah was sick, which really sucked because I personally sacrificed exactly four iotas of my personal sanity after Colin chewed up the library's copy of the book and I had to replace it with the last few dollars in my bank account.

And I thought the book was boring as heck, but I read every last word for a book club meeting I never attended. Yeah. Who knew I was a masochist?

And now it looks like I've decided to join The Next Chapter: Soul Coaching. Which I think is kinda cool, because not only will I get to work through a book with a group of other neat strangers, but the book itself looks right up my alley, since I've been going through a really introspective phase this year and also wanting to deepen my study of paganism. (This book isn't pagan, nor is the group pagan, not that I know of, but it certainly looks like it's pagan-friendly.)

I could use some structure to this navel-gazing I'm becoming fond of doing, so I'm jumping in. Interested? Feel free to jump in too.

And next month is... NaNoWriMo. Yep, the annual slapdash race toward a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days, in which the only prize is self-satisfaction and a nifty web badge. And, if you've written anything good, the chance to whip it into shape and get it published, which, apparently Sara Gruen did with the awesome, fabulous, amazing novel Water for Elephants.

So, yeah, November is NaNoWriMo. I've never done it, just drooled over it from the land of virtual-afar. I'd join, but since I'm already kinda-sorta ~~working on~~ juggling with writing three books -- two novels and one memoir -- at the moment, I think it's kinda dumb to add this to my "but, but, but... I wanna!" list.

How about you? Taking the pill? Corrinne Kenner has some tips to make the trip easier.

And... did I dream it, or did Hortense, the awesome new weekend blogger over at Jezebel say something about a Jezebel Book Club? A google search says yes, but click through and Jezebel redirects you back to the front page. If this was a tease, Tayari Jones got duped too - she linked to it on her blog as well.

Aw, woman. And I was so excited. Humph.

Would it be stupid to complain of having blue ovaries now?