not saying only nice things

does anyone else have the feeling that one of the main injuries (to writers and readers) and stupidities (by writers and readers) inherent in the world of online literature, both lit mags and books coming from small, independent presses, is a lack of real criticism? almost every blog i read, every review i read of a new book from a small press, praises the work as if ready to canonize it (there are exceptions, but on the whole, this praising happens a lot). my problem with this: these books can't all be great, right? i mean, if we look back through history, there are so so few greats (whatever a "great" might be). yet it seems like every other week a new book is pedestaled up into the cloudy and merciful land of the beauties proven through time. so, unless the work shuts me up and makes me say only niceness and blue skys at it, i sort of want to start saying things, critiquey things, but not real critiques either because i'm not a critic and have no desire to be. my friend had this idea for a website called "Not One Nice Word," and the place would act as a kind of workshop. so so good. i'd like to apply this to stuff already published, stuff out there in the world that has been blindly praised and not really critiqued, but i don't know, it just seems like a terrible move. once i began thinking of this, i began thinking of the books i've read recently i would like to "critique." there are three: Paul Yoon's Once the Shore, Mary Miller's Big World, and Brian Evenson's Last Days. i liked each of these books, but then i kept thinking about the things which didn't work in the books, lines that were facile, plots that were contrived, an absence of emotional resonance (i just said "emotional resonance," fuck). now though, as if i'm about to actually critique one of these things, i don't feel i can or want to, because inherent in the critique is the ostracizing that comes next, right? i mean, everything i've read about each of these books is so completely positive and geared toward the "mind blowing" that i don't really know if i want to engage in something that looks vaguely like a critique rather than a long blurb or plug. this isn't to say that i want to rip on stuff to rip on stuff. the above books are beauties, in there own ways, but also flawed, and the flaws seem to be like air to people, there and taken in but not noticed or cared about. i don't know. everyone talks so much stuff about how writers have to push through, use language new, find that other ground, that other land, some art that wasn't or hadn't been art; i want to say that without real, honest looking-on of such stuff, no pushing, no newness can happen. maybe there'll be something like a critique coming. maybe i'm just reading the wrong websites.