RAGE (Stephen King) - June 22/16

This is surprisingly terrible. If it turned out that King wrote this in a coked-up, stream-of-consciousness marathon, I wouldn't be even a little surprised. The characters are poorly defined and virtually nothing of interest occurs. And the flashbacks are tedious. I was skimming big time by the last few pages. * out of ****

MOVIE FREAK (Owen Gleiberman) - June 16/16

This is a perfectly readable memoir, especially after you get past the interminable first 50 pages (nobody cares about your childhood, Gleiberman!), but it's also far too long. Gleiberman loves to boast and brag and talk about himself, and he treats his opinions as if they're the final word. *** out of ****

ME BEFORE YOU (Jojo Moyes) - June 8/16

This is a pretty entertaining yet thoroughly overlong romantic drama. I did get choked up a few times in the first half but all the big stuff at the end didn't do much for me. I think I was just happy the story was drawing to a close. *** out of ****

EVERYONE BRAVE IS FORGIVEN (Christ Cleave) - June 1/16

Holy shit, Cleave, what happened?? I loved/really liked Cleave's first three books, so I'm fairly astonished at the degree to which I hated this. The author employs an almost insanely descriptive writing style that was often infuriating and I found myself skimming over whole passages. It didn't help that the narrative was sluggish as hell and the characters were uniformly uninteresting, either. A complete mess. * out of ****