Do you wanna know the best thing about being out of school? Reading what you want instead of reading what you're told to.
Since I've finished university I've been reading non-stop. Last year I read 15 books and this year I plan to beat that.
So far I've already got 4 books under my belt which I think is pretty impressive considering we're only a couple months into the year.
The first books I cracked open this year were Gillian Flynn's collection: Gone Girl, Sharp Objects and Dark Places.
I became obsessed with reading her work after seeing Gone Girl. If I really like a movie I like to read the book to get an even better insight into what the characters were thinking.
Surprisingly Gone Girl stayed pretty close to the book. It was a great read but if you could read it before seeing the movie I'd really suggest that!
I read Sharp Object second. This was Gillian Flynn's first book and I think it really shows. Her writing definitely isn't as well formed as it is by the time she had written Gone Girl. If you read Gillian Flynn's work I suggest starting with her oldest book and working towards her newest. This book did have a lot of crazy twists though so it was definitely a good read.
The last book I read was Dark Places. I really did love this book. Just like Gone Girl Gillian Flynn writes from different characters perspectives and I love when I get to read books like that. Just like all her other books there's a huge twist that keeps you hooked.
Overall I really recommend Gillian Flynn's books. She tells such amazing stories and her representation of women is mind blowing. My favourite was her perspective on "the cool girl":
“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
Get reading!
From the desk of:
Taylor Brown
Book Worm, Not actually a Worm
