Wafflings of a Cozmonaught

     Blood Trail  (2003) written by Nancy Springer Goodness. That was bad. Blood Trail is a novella that follows the tale of one Jeremy "Booger" Davis after his best friend is suddenly murdered. What begins as a personal, introspective narrative about dealing with the death of a close friend slowly morphs into town-wide fallout as questions about the unknown murderer linger. I like simple and fast writing styles, but the narrative voice is grating. And it's not just the protagonist; I hate all of the characters in this book. They are annoying and unbelievable. The melodrama is intense, and it has to be because nothing happens in the later half of this story. The conflict is manufactured and contrived. Sorry, but informing the police that your best friend was afraid of the murderer mere minutes before they were slaughtered by said person is not "ratting them out". Just a baffling conflict that dominates most of the pages. There is ambiguity as to what exactly hap...

    On Chesil Beach  (2007) written by Ian McEwan You know in school when your English teacher told you that your essay had to be 1,000 words long, but you'd said all you wanted to say in the first 300 so you had to fill? That's what this book is. Padded and pretentious. Brit Lit at its most indulgent. The story is as follows: two newlywed virgins are going at it and one of them decides they don't like it. That's it. That's the entire fucking thing, no joke. Okay, that's technically not the whole thing. There's some background scenes that I don't care about. And some future scenes that I leave me scratching my head because *spoiler* the one that doesn't like sex ends up successful and the one that likes sex ends up a loner for the rest of their life. Like... okay??? What are we trying to say here? This should have been 10k words at most. Yet Mr. McEwan has managed to wring it for many times that, evolving it like a Pokémon from short story to novella...

        Spilled Blood (2012) written by Brian Freeman I don't read a lot of mysteries, and this book didn't help my impression of them. The writing is amateurish. It's full of eyeroll-worthy cliches, passive language, and telling. The author does not trust the reader to understand what is happening; everything must be spelled out and overexplained. Maybe this is a hallmark style of mysteries, or maybe it's just Freeman. I'm not sure which. We follow Christopher, a Mr. Generic if there ever was one. He is on a trip to meet his ex-wife and daughter in a bumfuck Minnesota town named St. Croix. Turns out his baby girl is accused of shooting and killing a classmate, a nepo baby from the pinky-out town of Barron. Thus Christopher goes snooping around the towns like Nancy Drew, getting into everyone's business and being your usual hackneyed detective.  Also there may or may not be a child trafficking ring involved.  Also there's a mystery man named Aquarius ...

  The Chocolate War (1974) written by Robert Cormier Rambly narration that works. Disturbingly relatable teen masculinity. There was one passage in particular that was my childhood to a tee: He thought of his own parents and their useless lives--- his father collapsing into his nap every night after supper and his mother looking tired and dragged-out all the time. What the hell were they living for? He couldn't wait to get out of the house. "Where're you going all the time?" his mother asked as he fled the place. How could he tell her that he hated the house, that his mother and father were dead and didn't know it, that if it wasn't for television the place would be like a tomb. He couldn't say that because he really loved them and if the house caught fire in the middle of the night he'd rescue them, he'd be willing to sacrifice his own life for them. But, jeez, it was so boring, so deadly at home--- There were a couple contrived hiccups that held...