My 9-year-old is reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway to me as part of bedtime. It's maybe the 3rd one he has read to me or his mother.

These books have done nothing but induce anxiety in me. It's like some form of second-hand embarrassment or trauma. This specific volume describes a family vacation tropical getaway, and from the moment they get to the airport, through the whole plane ride, into the resort... it's just a laundry list of every single possible thing that can go wrong or mildly annoying...or even significantly annoying. The seats between a couple with a baby, the bathroom, food poisoning, booked up resort activities, pests...

Take any and every stereotypical situation, and this book just launches itself through them one by one in an epic saga of incompetence, annoyance, bad luck, poor planning, logistical difficulty, inconsiderate people, or bad karma. It's the vacation from Hell-Lite-- just stressful enough, but not life-threatening.

My son loves them, but I can't take it anymore!…