Wafflings of a Cozmonaught

Water for Elephants  (2006) written by Sara Gruen Oh, man. There are so many things this book does right. But let's start with the basics. Water for Elephants revolves around the story of one Jacob Jankowski. A more Polish American name there never was. Anywho, our local dude is an old man in the present day, and he is reminiscing on that one time that he had a mental breakdown and dropped out of Ivy League college to join a hobo circus. Yanno. As you do. What follows is our young man's introduction to the carny world as he is spirited around the country as the show's animal veterinarian. A historical bildungsroman, Jacob sees poverty, sex, and all the other good things in life firsthand amongst the backdrop of a world reeling from the fallout of the Great Depression.  Between these historical snippets, old man Jacob cuts back to the present. His crotchety self struggling to harmonize those memories of adventure and thrill with his current life of living in a sterile retire...

So Long, See You Tomorrow  (1980) written by William Maxwell This is a hard one to rate. First, Maxwell commits a writing cardinal sin by starting with the climax and then rewinding. He justifies this by having a memoir-ish structure. Bold, I grant you. Not sure if it was all that effective or necessary though. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So Long, See You Tomorrow follows the story of a regretful old man looking back on his life in rural Illinois. Specifically, he recalls the murder of a local man and the fallout this had on his boyhood relationship with Cletus, the son of the murderer. The narrator then spins a story about love and loss that he believes led up to the unfortunate event at the start of the novel. Is it true? Probably not. Does it have a kernel of truth in it? We don't know.  Indeed, even the author admits that people have a habit of lying. So we're stuck in a kind of limbo bimbo state as we traverse the novel not knowing who to trust. What to trust. Wh...

Thirteen Reasons Why  (2007) written by Jay Asher I couldn't give two hoots whether a book "romanticizes suicide" or "gives a voice to teens in need". I just care about if a story is good or not, and this book most certainly is not. Before we get to far into this whole spiel, let's quickly go over what this book is about. Thirteen Reasons Why revolves around a high schooler named Clay Jensen. One day Clay receives a number of record tapes from a girl in his class that committed suicide, Hannah Baker. On playing the first tape, Clay is treated to the voice of the deceased as she explains that each of the tapes contains a "reason why" she killed herself. Spooky. Should've been a horror. Like some Sadako Yamamura shit. Would have been all over that. Unfortunately, though, we aren't that lucky. So allow me to give you my own reasons why this book was horrible. Apologies for not making thirteen to fit the theme. Let's imagine that I stretche...

     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. 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 all the way to short novel. I'm not mad. I'm impressed, really. Impressed at Mr. McEwan's talent for digressing over and over and over again with unnecessary anecdotes and asides. Impressed and bored. Mostly bored. There is an interesting story in there somewhere, and I can see it. I can see great characters and an emotional writing style. But there is just so much fluff and sod to dig through. 🟥 Rating: 3/10

        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. The Hatfields and McCoys drama between the two towns is so outlandishly unbelievable that I audibly laughed on multiple occasions, and the ending can't help but feel a little contrived. A religion theme pops up one minute and is gone the next. The not-so-subtle Monsanto evil corp is cartoonish. This book desperately needed focus. There are so many characters and so much random surface-level tosh that I found myself zoning-out for minutes at a time, yet I never missed a beat because everything this book has is superficial. It ...

  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...

The Black Phone (2021) directed by Scott Derrickson - You know, I have to wonder when the concept of “stranger danger” became part of the American lexicon. Because when I was a kid, someone that drove around in a large black van with tinted windows would have labeled a “child abductor in-training” pretty dang quick. Maybe it’s just me, but that mode of transport doesn’t have the same mystique as an ice cream truck or clown car. Then again, it seems to work out well enough for the kids in this movie. The Black Phone follows Finney, your stereotypical bullied teenager model no.3, and his abduction by an unhinged psycho killer that sometimes wears a mask and sometimes doesn’t. However, being the son of a mother with supernatural abilities, he starts to hear hints from past victims of his captor and resolves to make his escape. What is up with that first act? Holy balls, the dialogue is pants. And the acting? Bordering on unwatchable. The kids I can somewhat excuse, but the adults are just...

  Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022) directed by Joel Crawford - Not gonna lie, if I saw someone in a fursuit charging me with a pair of sickles, I would shit myself so fast. Sorry—kid’s movie and all—I meant to say “crap myself”. Because “crap” is now something we say in kids animation, apparently. We also show blood from wounds. That’s cool, I guess; just feel like I missed the memo telling kid’s animation to be edgy again. PB&J is about the eponymous character who, being on his last of nine lives, searches for a wishing star that will give him some 1-Up mushrooms. Along the way he meets an old friend, makes a new one, and antagonizes some porridge and pie baddies. Meanwhile, a sussy furry cosplaying in a black hoodie stalks him on his journey. I’ll be honest, I only watched this movie because of the memes. And, oh boy, did the meme lords come through for me. The characters in this movie are awesome. The voice acting is superb. And the animation is gorgeous, likely due to t...