You're listening to all the backlist, a weekly show about books that are not new.

I am your host for the week, Tricia, and this is episode number 473.5.

As has been discussed by me and many many others I'm sure it's summertime for a lot of us

I hope no matter your weather you were saying safe and whether this season means you are trapped in your air-conditioned home begging for the heat index to go down,

or you are enjoying extra long sunny days with highs in the 70s, not to brag.

I think there is one thing that can unite many readers,

or at least readers of a certain age.

Because if you came of age as a reader when I did, which is to say roughly the 90s, there's a very good

chance, you know what I mean, when I say summer reading was all about earning personal pan pizzas. I am talking, of course, about Pizza Hut's

Book It program. An astonishingly simple concept. Basically, you set a reading goal, you track your your progress often with the help of your

parent or grown-up you hit that goal and you get a free personal pan pizza I

think maybe the limit was two toppings possibly one one topping, it doesn't really matter, it was a free pizza.

I couldn't tell you for sure.

So the Bookit program ran during the school year two I think, but I actually remember it as a summer thing.

Maybe you do two.

Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about.

But it's free pizza, so it's worth talking about.

Anyway, I have bucket-aged nephews and nieces now, so I started to look into the program for the first time in frankly decades.

And it turns out it still runs, but I waited too long and they had closed a registration by the time I looked it up.

Also, for some reason, they only still have the program for children and they don't have it for adults.

But honestly, I don't think we should let that stop any of us. Just do a bunch of summer reading, then buy yourself a pizza. It's that simple. You can generally, I did the research on this, you can generally get a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza for under $10.

In fact, where I live, you can get the pizza and aside for $7.

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