Book-it!

Back in 1985, Pizza Hut started a program called Book-It!™ In retrospect, surely they could have come up with a much better, or at least more clever, name for it. Of course, we all still remember it, so I guess the name served its purpose.

The point of Book-It!™ was to encourage children to read. A reading goal was set, and for every book or set of books we read, we received a little star. That star was then affixed to a purple pin. When all the stars made it to the pin, we wore that little pin to Pizza Hut and received a free personal pan pizza. Always the over-achiever, first grade was a year of lots of personal pan pizzas.

My friends and I were reminiscing about the days where we were rewarded (with food, not just a warm-fuzzy feeling) for our reading, and we decided to start an adult Book-It!™ program, with the rewards being beer or whisky.

Obviously we need rules, so the cheaters amongst us don't just read a bunch of Dr. Seuss books in anticipation of their Hi-Life. Should it be based on word count? number of pages? Maybe we get a star for every 200-pages read? Do audiobooks count? I mean, I can't read while I'm in the tour van because I throw up. And apparently police officers consider it "wreckless driving" to prop a book on the steering wheel.

Who's in for the Adult Book-it!™ series? And can someone out there please make adult Book-It!™ pins so we have someplace to store out little gold stars?

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