Dear Tellings,

I recently finished reading I Have a Bad Feeling About This, a 256 page realistic fiction comedy book by Jeff Strand. Jeff Strand is a four-time Bram Stoker award winning author. He was born December 14, 1970 in Baltimore, Maryland. At 6 months of age, they moved to Fairbanks, Alaska. I chose this story because I have read it before, and it is absolutely hilarious. The reason that I read it before was because it was a nobel-prize winner/nominee (I forget), and I needed to read one of those for the summer reading list. The book is great, and for once in my life, makes me wanna read more of the author’s’ books. Usually I don’t care about who the author is, and I still don’t, but if it’s Jeff Strand, most likely I’ll read it. If it turns out that most of his books aren’t funny, I’ll be most sorrowful. The reason I enjoyed the book is because it’s a comedy book, and I love comedy. Most “comedy” books I read aren’t at all humorous. Usually they just say a dumb joke then claim that the characters in the book laughed, and I don’t find it funny. This book had comedic moments, for example, right at the beginning. The main character, Henry, is being forced by his dad to watch a video for a survival camp. Henry keeps saying he doesn’t want to go. His dad asks;
“Aren’t you tired of bullies kicking sand in your face?” Henry replies with;
“Actually, that’s never happened.” Then the comedy ensues.
“It’s never happened because you never go to the beach, Henry.”
“Well that’s logical. There’s lots of things to fear at the beach.”
“The water.”
“You can drown!”
“Sharks.”
“Well, obviously, everyone’s afraid of sharks, dad.”
“Jellyfish.”
“Which sting you.”
“Seahorses.”
“I’m not proud of that.”
“C’mon son, this will be good for you, it’ll help you get over your fears!”
“Going into the woods will help diminish my fear of jellyfish?”

This book is about a boy named Henry, who, along with his friend Randy, go to a survival camp for a few weeks, where they try to become men, but crazy occurrences happen, and there ends up being a movie about it. There are also random scenes that take place in a viewing for the movie about what happened in the book you’re reading, where an interviewer for the news named Rad Rad Roger tries to interview Henry, gets kicked out of the theater, goes to prison at some point and gets shanked. Which was a weird part of the story.

The narrative voice in this book is amazingly comedic, with countless jokes that actually make me chuckle, unlike other books. This book was funny, action-packed, and well worth a read. And maybe a re-read or two. This book doesn’t remind me of any other book I’ve read, the only books that made me laugh were when I was a lot younger and I read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.

There isn’t really a quote I like, honestly, unless one of the jokes counts as a quote. This book was maybe a 9 out of 10 because I’m very harsh and rarely give anything the top rating for something.

From: Bran