Tag: best-seller

GONE GIRL – I Wish She’d Kept Going

dorothy parker gone girlOK so I was all set to do some real work this morning.  I was.  Then I saw this in my friend Katherine Stone’s Facebook feed:

Gonegirl katherine

Katherine is a remarkable person whose fierce advocacy for women with post partum mood and anxiety disorders is legendary.  I listen to her.

The problem is, I really really hate Gone Girl.  Really.

First of all I figured out the ending near the beginning.  Secondly, the ending was kind of lifted from SPOILER ALERT: Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent.  Third, I’m betting the movie, soon to be released, is really good, which will just get more people saying nice things about the book.  David Fincher.  Ben Affleck.  Neil Patrick Harris.  What could go wrong?  I read they changed the ending, too.  In principal, that usually bothers me but in this case I’m really curious to see if the change makes the story more palatable.

I am far from the only person with negative feelings toward this novel.  The sample in Katherine’s feed includes comments like these:

Rachel Kaffenberger Great writing but the characters just pissed me off. I hated that book. Awful, horrible people are in that book.

Jen Neeld Bradshaw Ha! I read it two weeks ago and I still have some rage.

Asha Dornfest That book freaked me out.

Deb Rox I threw the book. You can guess which scene.

Kit Kelly I hated it.

And my own two personal favorites:

Susan Petcher I feel like “Books that Make You Hate Humanity” needs to be a new FB meme.

Doug French I wanted the last sentence of the book to be, “And then they all piled into a Greyhound Bus and drove into a volcano.”

I’m with Doug.  There were also some positive comments but these are the ones I agree with and there are already enough good comments out there in the ether and it’s my blog so….

Even so, it is true that the book evoked a ton of comments and a lot of emotion.  I guess there’s some skill required for that to happen but if that’s true, she’s squandered it.  Allegedly her other work is better but that’s no excuse – especially for a public which seems to be gaga for this one.

Right now I am reading California, a dystopian, almost too real story of a dark American future.  It’s probably only on the radar screen because Stephen Colbert used it as an example of books by young first-time authors who are most hurt by the Amazon-Hachette battle.  Since then it too has gotten a lot of attention so one makes me think of the other.

California doesn’t have as many stars on goodreads.  For me though, it’s so very much more exciting and provocative.  Her characters are more than horrible stereotypes, and it’s Edan Lepucki’s first published novel which is exciting.

This is not a contest between California and Gone Girl or between Stephen Colbert and Ben Affleck.  At least not to me.  I just didn’t want to be this mean about a book without including one that has my attention, is unpredictable, and includes some decent, interesting people.

Don’t we love that books can get us all riled up like this?  Far more fun that terrorists and the NFL!

And for a treat, here’s the Colbert Report after LePucki’s book made the New York Times Best Seller List:

OH and #boycottNFLsponsors.

 

 

Report from London: Barack Obama, Man of the Year and Best-Sellwe

LON Man of the Year inside pg.
First-ever Times of London Man of the Year.  This is pretty amazing if you’ve followed the disdain with which the U.S., and particularly George Bush, have been viewed here in Europe. The UK may in many ways be more angry than most, because they were sucked into the Iraq war too. 

But my son, the one who works in London and has been going back and forth for five years or more,reported that the day after the election it felt better to be American in Europe than it had in a long time.  Add that to what happened  when Obama went to Berlin: the amazing reception arising, I believe, because he stands for the America that the rest of the world wants to know.  The America of promise and compassion and justice and hope.

Now the Times of London, one of the great London newspapers, has, in its first Timers Person of the Year – worldwide – chosen President-Elect Barack Obama. In their editorial, they say:

What, then, made Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency so remarkable, such a landmark event, is not the fact of his improbability or of his extraordinary background. What made it landmark is the nature of those things. For unlike his predecessors, Mr Obama’s improbability, Mr Obama's extraordinary background, is not just important to him and to the story of his personal triumph. It caps a period of incredible change in America and makes possible incredible change in the world. And it is this – and the way he won the presidency – that made him the obvious choice as The Times Person of 2008.

London Obama books cropped
Of course the next four years are pretty scary, and it's probably impossible for him to live up to all we hope for him, but at least, for now, we are once again members in good, or at least better, standing, in the world community. 

There's more evidence. These are the best-sellers in Waterston's bookstore in Chiswick. Number one and number four.  This will be a president the world wants to know.  So while it's scary, it's also exciting: to have selected a leader who makes us proud, through a process that made us proud, to have elected an African American president for our country, which, with all its troubles, once again makes us proud too.  The Bush years broke more hearts than our own, and the world reaction to Obama, from the Berlin speech to the London Times to front pages and African murals and Sunday commentary from one end of the world to the other proves it.

We don't know what will come next; we don't know how we will respond to that which is asked of us – and much will be.  But we do know, I think, that we have chosen, as our leader, someone whose place in the world enhances that of our country, and of us, and begins to build the faith, and determination, that will take us where we need to go.