UN Report Confirms World's Conflicts Now Mostly Just Really Aggressive Book Clubs

GENEVA — A landmark United Nations report released Tuesday has confirmed what many geopolitical analysts have long suspected: the majority of the world's armed conflicts have quietly transitioned into heated book club disagreements, with casualties mounting at an alarming rate among those who refused to finish the assigned chapters. The 847-page report, which itself claimed three copy editors, concludes that literature-based hostilities now account for roughly 94% of all civilian unrest globally.

"We are seeing an unprecedented level of passion around the works of Cormac McCarthy," said Dr. Philippa Von Strudel, the UN's newly appointed Special Envoy for Narrative Grievances, speaking from a fortified reading nook in the Swiss Alps. "When someone shows up to the group having only watched the movie, frankly, the Geneva Convention offers very little protection."

The report notes with particular concern that women and girls represent a growing proportion of conflict casualties, which researchers attribute entirely to the fact that women are statistically finishing the books faster and therefore arriving to meetings with stronger opinions and marginalia that experts describe as, quote, "devastatingly well-sourced." Men, the report notes, have largely been neutralized in the early chapters.

Among the most volatile flashpoints identified were disputes over whether the ending of "Gone Girl" was satisfying, a four-year running argument in suburban Ohio over whether audiobooks count, and what the report grimly labels the "Eat Pray Love Corridor" — a stretch of northern Italy where tensions remain critically elevated. The UN is urging member nations to immediately deploy trained facilitators with experience in de-escalating feelings about unreliable narrators.

World leaders have responded with characteristic urgency. President of the International Council of Unfinished Novels, Thaddeus Q. Brimblesworth III, issued a statement calling for a 30-day ceasefire to allow all parties to at least finish the epilogue. "Nobody wants another Infinite Jest situation," Brimblesworth said, visibly trembling. "We lost good people. Mostly to back pain, but still."

The UN report concludes with a series of twelve recommendations, the first of which is simply the word "Please" typed in 48-point font, followed by a list of suggested beach reads intended to reduce overall hostility. A follow-up summit is scheduled for September, assuming all parties can agree on a venue that does not also serve as a Barnes & Noble, which the report classifies, without further elaboration, as a known radicalization site.