Gone Girl is the third and most popular of Gillian Flynn’s published works. Like her previous two novels, Gone Girl is a rather dark novel about how people may not be who we seem. After a woman, Amy, goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, suspicions turn towards the husband, Nick, and as the story unravels we learn quite a bit about the couple. As we uncover more and more clues as to her disappearance, we discover that perhaps we don’t really know our spouses as well as we think, and we question our own facades that we put up in our marriages. With many twists, this novel will keep you guessing until the very end.
This is a somewhat difficult book to review because to say too much is to majorly spoil the book, which would be a shame. I will say that in the midst of the disappearance of Amy the novel does a great job of exploring two different topics: (1) the parts we play in society in order to fit in or be liked and (2) the effects the media can have on our mindsets. When we meet someone for the first time, do we act like ourselves or do we act in a way so that person would like us? If that relationship endures and we were, in a way, acting like someone other than ourselves, at what point do we drop the act, if ever, and at what point does the act become the person who we really are? These are some intriguing questions to ponder and, while I wouldn’t go as far as the characters in this book go, the book has made me think about these questions within my own marriage.
Book jacket summaries can offer an intriguing glimpse of the riches within its contents or have the opposite effect. A poor summary will result in a reader thrusting a book back on a shelf in the blink of an eye. The teaser for The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber left me somewhere in the middle.
The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones is the first book in a 10 book series about a large-scale scavenger hunt that takes family members all over the world in search for clues to becoming the most powerful person on Earth. Two teenage siblings, Dan and Amy, find themselves in an exciting but dangerous adventure as they search for and follow the clues. Other family members such as the snotty Kabras and “œthe bull in a china shop” Holt family, force Dan and Amy to stay on their toes and remember not to trust anyone, especially family. Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, is the writer of this series and the overall story arc for the series, which he then hands off to other writers for the other books in the series.
The Maltese Falcon is a detective novel written in 1929 by Dashiell Hammett and immortalized in film in 1941 by director John Huston. The detective in the novel, Sam Spade, is a hardened man whose characterization becomes a model for many detectives to come. In this novel, Sam Spade is hired by a woman, Miss Wonderly, to follow a man who has supposedly run away with her sister. From here out, Spade encounters a number of intriguing characters, learns that things and people are not whom they seem and ensures, in the end, that justice will be served no matter the cost.
The Maze Runner By James Dashner is the first part in a three part series about a group of teenagers who find themselves in the middle of a maze. Every month a new boy wakes up in the strange new world, the Glade, to find his memory wiped. Each day the boys struggle to survive in this existence where they are given the mere essentials. Leaderships form and boys are assigned to work jobs where they excel the most. One job is to be a runner and go out each day in the maze to see if a way out can be found. The story revolves around Thomas who desires to become a runner as it appears that he may know more about the maze than most.
The Soloist is the retelling of Steve Lopez’ relationship with Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a homeless musical prodigy whom Lopez meets while out riding his bike in Los Angeles. Lopez is immediately amazed by Ayers abilities, especially seeing that he is playing well on a two-string violin. He begins to write about Ayers in his column at the L.A. Times. Through his columns, readers send him instruments for Ayers to play.
For years many of us have struggled with trying to measure up to others standards for us and for our own. We walk around calling ourselves failures. We tell ourselves we are not smart enough, good enough, nice enough, and on and on. After spending years telling himself similar things, Michael Perkins discovered that none of those things were what God had to say about him.