THE GOOD LUCK OF RIGHT NOW (Matthew Quick) - January 30/16

This was so quirky it was practically unreadable. The characters' relentless loopiness made it difficult to care about any of this, but I will admit the final stretch was fairly decent (it had a misfits-find-their-place vibe that I always find appealing). ** out of ****

THE APPEAL (John Grisham) - January 23/16

So this was a pretty frustrating book. There's definitely interesting stuff here but Grisham bogs things down with the minutia of a campaign to elect a Supreme Court judge. There's finally some interesting stuff at the end as the bought judge's son is injured but it's irrelevant since said judge doesn't even change his decision. ** out of ****

THE CHOICE (Nicolas Sparks) - January 12/16

This is an almost prototypical Sparks drama and I still liked it, although I did think the book dragged before the two central characters got together. I also think Sparks missed a golden opportunity to not have the two guys confront one another, or at the very least to not have the other guy show up at the hospital. Still, the two main characters are personable and I was rooting for them. **1/2 out of ****

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (Muriel Spark) - January 6/16

Oh, barf. This terribly written book is completely uninvolving from the word go, as Spark offers up a succession of almost impossibly underdeveloped characters and places them in seriously tedious scenarios. It's so repetitive, too. If I read one more character referring to the title character's "prime," I was going to throw the book out the window. Yeesh, what a bore. * out of ****

SILVER SCREEN FIEND (Patton Oswalt) - January 4/15

A huge improvement over Oswalt's last book, Silver Screen Fiend is nevertheless stymied by Oswalt's penchant for literary prose. He's probably *not* trying too hard, but that's still how it reads. I enjoyed the book anyway, given that it focuses on Oswat's OCD-like obsession with movies and also the nascent period of his standup and acting careers. The last bit, involving a fake series of double bills, is a waste of time. *** out of ****