Another monthly challenge to myself: read a book, and report on it here (to keep me honest.) These will not be terribly in depth or insightful reviews. Here’s March’s.

This book is about hell. A fully customized, modern, even quirky hell, exactly the approach I’ve always wanted to read about.

There’s a plot, but the absolute joy are all the details, the weird and hilarious descriptions of hell’s denizens and the various tortures they are put through by Satan (or Bee-bub, as he’s often known.) Celebrity bloggers are forced to parade in skimpy swimsuits, while W. R. Hearst has to become a blogger himself (his computer keyboard perpetually stuck in all caps), after hell’s paper shuts down. Bee-bub’s personal chauffeur is Richard Nixon. Downtown hell is a maze of Peachtree Streets, Peachtree Avenues, Peachtree Street Streets. I mean, come on. This book was made for me.

It’s like a mix of Terry Gilliam, Kurt Vonnegut and Steven King. Weird, wicked, smart, hilarious. Read it! Even a complainy cretin like me couldn’t put it down!

• More about Hell from Butler’s website
• Tweets from Hell — two examples:
  “The future is already present and the past is everywhere here in Hell: stop and take a whiff, folks: sulfur and sweat and self-righteousness”;
  “More technological torture: while the heat of Rome in flames rages in his head, Nero can only play the iPhone ocarina app”
• Tweets from Hell archives