This Book Will Change Your Life - Gone Girl by the Gillian Flynn.

"Fucker." Indeed. Travel. Obsess. Planes. Delays. Read. Gone Girl. We are caught up in wanting to see the movie. We have been enviously watching a co-worker consume it. A copy is just sitting there in the laundry room as if planted and waiting for us. And it's really impossible to put down. It is. The idea of the "cool girl," while likely already cliche, or soon to be, is quite incisive in its take down of men and just how limited men are when it comes to what we want from women generally, and sex more specifically, and how little we look at how not self-aware we truly are. The twists and turns are endless and smart and feel unexpected even when expected. The writing is taut, and knowing, and while we suppose the commentary on the media, social and otherwise, is probably knowing as well, it's probably overstated. If we have any problem with such a relentlessly readable book, its that as it evolves it's hard not to feel like the author sort of hates women, or at least celebrates a little too much, as opposed say to skewering, the ways people hate women when they say why they do. It may be that we are feeling particularly sensitive to this during a time when so many male, and some female, authors have been exposed as being quite as terrible towards women as we hope they won't be. It may also be that this can be a blind spot of ours, this being, how these men seemingly, not allegedly, it clearly isn't alleged, but seemingly view women, as things to have sex with, bully, and take advantage of because they think they are allowed to, and that women are there for those reasons, more objects than people. And while the character of Nick may not fill this space, it's hard to feel like Amy isn't being treated this way - portrayed as broken and sad, possibly crazy, and yet not much more than a vehicle to project all sorts of bile onto. Still, is Gone Girl compulsively readable regardless? It is. Do we hate ourselves for feeling this way? Yes, sort of, maybe. It's so hard not to want to see what happens next, much less what David Fincher will do with it. It just feels a little wrong feeling that way. Fucker indeed.