np, bro

But seriously though, hang in there. You a cool dude.

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The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver, 2006

in this edition of supermarketcore we are treated to a murder mystery orchestrated by a sadistic clockophile whose overly elaborate scheme's ultimate motives are obfuscated by the contrived convolution of it all. Then we find he's some kinda sextuple agent involved in way too many factions for his own good.

While that plot and the style of these sorts of books are generally decent though redundant, they always try to shed so much cliched and overused light on the character's inner workings and emotions and state of mind that you might figure the lamp isn't even plugged in. They're literally all the same. Then again so are the characters.

I dunno why these authors write novels a mile a minute without ever changing anything at all but it's whatever.

3.25/5

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Little Nothing by Marisa Silver, 2016

This is an interesting story about coming to terms with your worldly vessel. I think. It follows a girl born dwarfed in an unnamed village somewhere and sometime where gypsies and voodoo curses are relevant. Ashamed of her striking ugliness, her parents venture to stretch her into a tall beautiful girl by way of what is basically a doctor's torture device, as if her appearance would change after dislocating joints and irreparably harming bones. It doesn't. In fact she gets uglier and hairier. What comes next I shan't explicitly state but it's quite a thing.

Separated from a traveling entertainment troupe she'd joined, her best and perhaps only friend and most definitely only almost lover is torn and searches for her.

Then we're plagued with wolves.

It's described as emotionally suspenseful and it's pretty apt, especially near the end. It's a different kind of suspense than your generic mysteries and horrors which are intent on tensing the mind, instead focusing on your heart. It had a strange sense of incompletion that initially disappointed me but then I figured the context, themes already covered and events already passed, and it works out in accordance to the whole story. In a sense it doesn't really end, a cycle.

Truly original and captivating.

4/5

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The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, 1979

Vast generational saga of life long forbidden love and life in the Australian outback. It follows the plight of a sprawling family and their even more sprawling inherited estate, and the infatuation of the only girl of the like 27 piece family with a kinda douchey priest. A lot happens in the story's 60 some years.

It may be dry and uneventful but it paints a humbling portrait of foolish romance and family matters.

4/5

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Six Years by Harlan Coben, 2013

Best selling thriller recipe:

30 oz secrets
1-3 characters that are not what they seem
2 g culturally relevant and unfunny jokes
1 oz lost love
1 agenda that is "bigger than you could imagine"

2.5/5

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The Witchfinder's Sister by Beth Underdown, 2017

Now this one was tight. The story of witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins is very interesting and enigmatic on it's own, and this is told from the point of view of his fictional sister.

Hopkins was at large before the Salem witch trials, executing women all across the Tendring Hundred for varying degrees of witch-esque activities. It had great tension as his sister is subjected to her brother's ghastly deeds, along with a plethora of secrets perhaps better left untold. The atmosphere is sparse and bleak, overcast with the coming dread of the witchfinder, fear in the hearts of his subjects.

4.5/5

Don't forget one main character who exists as a self-insert for middle class professional men with no personalities.

damn

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Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, 2010

A South African yarn spun from crime and general seediness. Takes place in some alternate future where criminals are marked by being "animalled", meaning, they give you an animal. I never really figured out who. But the animals also come with some vague magical leanings, and those with them are ostracized and segregated in this sort of ghetto called Zoo City.

A journalist and her sloth are good at finding lost things (that's her whatever the ****), and use this ability to help keep herself afloat amidst great debts and undesirable folks, as well as some nice internet fraud. She gets swept up in the underbelly of this whack society and well it's just no good.

I liked it and would like to read more from the author.

4/5

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Leaving the World by Douglas Kennedy, 2009

the plight of a woman overloaded with loss and grief. It's definitely pretentious in its prose and insights and vocabulary but not horribly so like other people have said. Genuine and realistic and heart rending, around part 4 it becomes a drastically different story.

4/5