Ha, Tom. I love the James Joyce one.

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I'm just starting book 2 of Gone Girl, and OMGWTF! I did not see that coming.

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Girl,

the shit gets super cray cray. You have no idea.

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I couldn't resist finishing Gone Girl tonight. I kept thinking I could put it down, but then I couldn't. I still want more.

I want to know if she kills him for that last insult or if they end up raising a monster together. I'll go back to see what other people posted about it tomorrow, but for now I really should go to bed.

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Have people seen this? Book covers redrawn as if the author were the opposite gender. It's a neat little thought experiment. I love the female Clockwork Orange cover:

[link]

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I like that! It's cool.

I don't actually mind gender-marketed covers, though. My problem is with the men who want to read the books more pitched toward women but get embarrassed by the cover.

A) get a Kindle
B) or just read the pink book. Who cares? Anybody who judges you for liking Shopaholics wouldn't be your friend if you knew them, so why cater to them?

Frankly, I like the fact that I can easily tell which books are by Sophie Kinsella or might as well be from a mile away - as a male who really enjoys reading that genre, I appreciate the clear signal. I have learned that I enjoy books marketed in that manner. Similarly, I enjoy the Serious Thriller mass market covers that inform me this book is by Dean Koontz or might as well be, because I let my eye wander right past them. Show me an alien? I'll at least read the summary.

I am part of the target markets that I choose to be part of. The marketing itself then serves me. Although I may like to preach "Don't judge a book by its cover", I would find a coverless bookstore to be intimidating and confusing.

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Gone Girl was a page turner for sure, and there were some things I liked about it, but so much of the characterization just did not work for me, and all the hype about how it's a book about marriage and men and women and blah blah blah... uh, if

you're married to a total psychopath (sociopath?), then perhaps it would give you some insight into your own marriage, but otherwise it didn't seem to have a whole lot to say about actual human relationships.

I disagree with this. I think the book had a lot to say about how people often present one face to a significant other when you first start dating and then end up showing your real self little by little over time. It was just taken to the extreme in this case.

I also thought there was some great stuff in the book about journalism and the media and how they report on things like a missing woman, and how easy it is to sway public perception of someone's guilt or innocence.

Just started Gone Girl -- maybe four chapters in -- and I love it. She's an incredible writer. I'm a little wary about hating the plot of it toward the end, because there was a pretty divisive twist, right?

The writing really was incredible. Has anyone read any of Flynn's other books? I think I need to check them out.

yeah, you too see the ending more "favorably" than I did. I really hated it. Makes me wonder

if this is how her parents started out .

I loved the ending, but the book did really make me wonder about Amy's parents. They're really the great unsolved mystery of the book. How exactly did they end up raising someone like Amy, and was their marriage really as perfect as it seemed from the outside? Was it a perfect marriage where they only cared about each other and not as much about Amy help turn Amy into what she was? What does that say about Amy and Nick's baby's future? Can two such messed up people raise a perfectly normal child?

Count me among those who think the ending of Gone Girl is rather perfect. Not satisfying in any way, but perfect.

I agree. I loved that I couldn't figure out where it was going to go, even as the end got closer and closer.

I'd really love it if Flynn wrote another book someday from the point of view of the kid, and I'd also love another book with the lawyer and his wife.

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re: book covers, I'm really annoyed about books marketed to women that don't show a woman's face, or a body from the neck down or nose down, or osmething. As if seeing a picture of an actual person will somehow hurt the chances of someone picking up the book.

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I'm really annoyed about books marketed to women that don't show a woman's face

That's true. I remember the Gossip Girl books all doing that, and I thought it was very weird. Those covers matched the books almost not at all, except that neither of them were very good.

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It's like someone in marketing said "Women want to identify with the heroine of the book, and they can't if there's a picture of someone on the book."

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