Reader's Diary #1979- Cherie Priest (writer), Tara O'Connor (illustrator): Agony House

Just recently marked the 26th Literary Review's Bad Writing in Sex Award and as always these were a real treat to behold. So bad they're at the very least entertaining. But of course, it doesn't have to take a sex scene to come on a piece so spectacularly bad that it haunts you. There are plenty of books that I didn't enjoy this year but none had the distinction of having a memorably bad passage... until now.

He wasn't paying a lick of attention. He was too wrapped up in the chase, following his nose like a cartoon bird on a cereal box.

It's meant, I suppose, to be a funny simile, but man, is it ever corny and awkward. And it's particularly so since she seems to go out of her way to avoid referencing the actual character or the cereal. Yet elsewhere she name drops McDonald's and Wendy's. Would mentioning Toucan Sam and Froot Loops been that difficult? Not that it would have been a great sentence even with it, but it's just laughably bad this way.

To be fair though, the rest of the book isn't terrible to this extreme. I did find friendships rushed to the point of implausibility and the book's plot could have used some work (the worst for me was that it took a character the entire book to read a comic that, had she read it at any normal speed, could have probably solved the whole predictable mystery remarkably fast). But there were some aspects I liked; the comic parts themselves were well done and I enjoyed how they connected to the textual story, I enjoyed the New Orleans setting, and there were hints at least of weightier themes (gentrification, police racism, and so on).