"Because Isn't That the Point of Every Relationship: To Be Known By Someone Else, To Be Understood? He Gets Me. She Gets Me. Isn't That the Simple Magic Phrase?"

Yes, I read Gone Girl in a week. More appropriately, I read two-thirds of it yesterday. From the time I woke up to around midnight, that was pretty much all I did. I left to meet a friend for lunch, but that was it. Man, I love holiday weekends.

So I did get totally sucked in. And I am beginning to be convinced that if I had it all to do again, I would want to be a detective. Not with the whole actually being a cop part, but the solving crimes part. Because I could just read mystery stories and be a happy camper. Or watch non-stop marathons of Law and Order: SVU or Dateline (not that I do that now or anything...I swear. I actually had to take a break from the Law and Order marathons because it was beginning to give me a horribly bleak outlook on the world. And I would go to bed convinced that someone was going to break into my apartment in the middle of the night. I don't need that kind of paranoia).

Without giving too much away, and you can probably already tell this from the commercials for the movie, but Gone Girl is simply that: a story about a husband whose wife disappears. So the book centers around the investigation of her disappearance, and is told in alternating chapters from the husbands perspective and then the wife's perspective via journal entries from the previous 7 years of their relationship. The writing is very clever, as the voices of the 2 characters are so well-defined (often in more ways than 1...). And not just the storyline is clever, but what the characters come to realize about themselves, each other, who they are/were in their relationship together, who they wanted to be, and who they were pretending to be. I honestly can't wait to see the movie because I think that in David Fincher's hands, the book could be masterfully translated. Maybe I can sneak that in before the end of the holiday weekend...

But perhaps what I loved most about this book was that feeling of getting so immersed in a book, that I literally couldn't put it down. Even while making dinner, I was kind of half reading in between doing things. It has been a really long time since I gotten that into a book I was reading, and I just brings me so much joy. I do think it was a testament to how well done the book is for a modern story. I really hope to keep that craving for reading at the forefront of my noggin, and get so very taken with the next books I read, where I just fly through them, completely entranced with the story and writing.

But I'm not necessarily holding my breath on that. Because I'm moving on to Hamlet. So the bf and I are HUGE fans of Sons of Anarchy. Like, binge watched all 6 previous seasons for a large portion of our summer (who needs sunshine and warm weather when you have a motorcycle club and seriously graphic violence?). And I know Kurt Sutter has said that the show was based off of Hamlet (and on it's surface, that seems clear, right? Father is killed by stepfather, who then marries mother, and how the son discovers this, and the events that occur as a result). But I always seem to get the impression that there's so much more than just that. As an obvious place to start, many of the episode titles are quotes from Hamlet. So I'm looking forward to really reading it carefully and understanding each and every passage, and then looping it back to SOA. So it might sound strange that I'm reading Hamlet to better understand and appreciate a television show, but hey, if it's going to get me to read it in the level of detail that I plan on, then so be it.

Off I go. Hopefully, I'll be able to hunker down and read more during the holidays, but I'll be moving in a couple weeks, so I don't anticipate that happening too much. But I'll give it a shot!

Happy Saturday!