I have just finished reading Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. Well, I didn't just finish reading it; it has been about three days and three hours since I finally finished the novel, which ended more like a whimper than the punch I wanted it to follow through with. No matter, that's not what the point of this post is. (Though, if you want to read that short review on Goodreads, be my guest.) The point is that I hardly read anymore.
This year alone, I've read a total of three and a half books. Allow me to explain: The first book this year was The Fault in Our Stars. I had TFiOS sitting on my shelf for a good year before I ever decided to pick it up. (Side note: why do people constantly add "good" to things when they really just mean "long"? Also, can a year even be long, per sé? A year is as long as it is, which just so happens to be a year.) I fell in love with it the way I fall in love with all John Green novels. I have no idea why it took me so long to read it, but I think it may be that I kept trying to get through Will Grayson, Will Grayson just because I love John Green novels. But I just couldn't. So I picked up TFiOS and read it last spring and loved it.
Then, someone on Goodreads suggested I read Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma, which is overwrought and deals with incest. I didn't know what to think about it.
Needing a laugh, I decided to buy Ellen DeGeneres' latest book. It wasn't funny like the first two books. I got through half of it and said no more. This is the "half" as aforementioned.
So, after hearing about Gillian Flynn's "weird" novel Gone Girl and how it has become a #1 New York Times Bestseller more than a year and a half after it was published, I figured why not. I powered through that novel so quickly, I lost time. Reading new books takes quite an investment, so when you find an author whose voice and prose you just love, you want to cling on to them and never let go. It happened with John Green, and it happened again for me with Gillian Flynn. Halfway through the book, I knew I had to read one of her past novels — and soon.
