The Hills Book Club (Or, "Yes, we can totally, like, read")

Four fashionable women in their early 20s meet at a trendy LA restaurant to discuss Bernhard Schlink's novel, The Reader. They're eating al fresco even though none of them smoke. This is LA after all, the city where ladies consider three bites of fruit and four sips of diet soda a full meal. Let's call the women LC, Lo, Audrina, and Heidi.

Just a brief background: LC is the "queen bee." Lo is LC's best friend. LC and Heidi are friends with Audrina. LC and Heidi used to be best friends, but right now they're just civil with one another. Heidi is engaged to Spencer (not appearing in this article), who LC hates. There's supposed to be five of them; unfortunately, Whitney is in New York. Let's listen in, shall we?

LC: I totally love this book! Schink, Schlik, Shilk, err, Schlink really wrote a good one.

Lo: I agree, LC. It is a page turner. Definitely! I read it in, like, just 5 months! I am so totally going BFF on Hanna.

Audrina (looks at the ceiling and takes a teeny bite of her tofu sausage): Uhuh...

Heidi: I just don't get it, LC. What's will all this making out with that guy? He's, like, so young! All that acne and those skid marks and that oily hair. Gross.

LC: She's using him, Heidi. She can't read so she's, like, using her body to get him to read to her.

Lo: Wait, the reader in the book isn't Hanna? It's actually the boy? I am so getting it right now.

Audrina (more ceiling staring): Mmmm...

Heidi: Didn't you go to UCLA or something, Lo? Shouldn't this reading stuff be, like, natural to you?

Lo: I didn't take up Literature, Heidi. So there. Audrina, you've been quiet. Whachu think about the book?

Audrina: You know what's weird? I saw a movie with that Brit girl from Titanic and it's, like, almost the same as this book. That Titanic chick was, like, so naked half the time!

LC: Hello?! The movie was based on this book, you stupid biatch.

Audrina: You think you're so smart, don't you? You with your blonde hair and your clothing line and your... ummm... never mind. I'll be, like, hanging out with Justin Bobby after this. At least I have a man, LC.

Lo: Ouch. That was just so uncalled for. Let's go back to talking about the book.

Heidi: What's the point of all this when there's no cameras around? Where the hell is TMZ? Those guys should be, like, all over us right now.

LC: They're probably trailing that trainwreck Lindsay. Does she even read -- like we do?

Audrina: Do lesbians even, like, read?

Lo: Don't be dumb. She's bisexual. She's into Jack Nicholson too, you know.

Heidi: So she likes her sushi and her aged ham. Big deal, Lo.

Audrina: Huh? What does sushi have to do with anything? And what about ham?


And so it came to pass that the girls quietly went their own ways, vowing never to discuss anything about books ever again.