I was in college when her first album came out and Baby One More Time was all over the media. I always thought the music was tacky, calculated mainstream pop, but you couldn’t deny her appeal–she appeared as if she was crafted from a laboratory to appeal to the type of kids in that specific generation. And probably more than a few adults as well. Her handlers knew exactly what they were doing in her presentation.

Still everyone has their own tastes and I’m probably not in a position to criticize anyone else’s given my love of some of the tackiest 80s New Wave.

Did she use a ghostwriter? The writing was basic but okay, although the three-page chapters were an unusual choice.

Yes, Sam Lansky helped her write it.

Fanfic typically overexplains everything. They’re definitely not as fast paced.

Modern pop culture is actually trending more towards that kind of writing than lean and brisk stories that go too fast. That’s how we get all these bloated movies and TV series, and books by big name authors that run about 300 pages too long.

I don’t really use a rating system or try to break down the mechanics of it. I USED to do that, but I found there are just too many unclassifiable books out there that can’t be graded along a curve that I still greatly enjoy. Sometimes I can really like a book even if it fails on several technical categories and sometimes I can dislike a book that is really actually well put together.

So I just go on a case by case basis.

I didn’t mind the ending in 11/22/63. It seemed satisfactory to me. It wasn’t really batshit. IIRC it just went on a bit long. Certainly very far from a “throw the book across the room” kind of ending.