Gone Girl - by Gillian Flynn

I found out about this book when I read Voracious. I don't read a lot of thrillers, but the descriptions on this one made it seem like it had some good twists, so when I found a used copy for 50 cents at a church book sale I picked it up. All the usual suspects can be dismissed in this nail biter. And, in fact, for readers the mystery of what exactly happened to Amy Elliott Dunne (inspiration for the ever-popular Amazing Amy series of books) is solved just past the halfway point in the book, but the thrill of the chase continues to the end. It is hard to write about this novel without giving away any spoilers, so I will simply stick to discussing the brief two library passages. The first describes exactly how popular the Amazing Amy book series was among "the rising  yuppie class: They were the pet Rock of parenting. The Rubik's Cube of child rearing...At one point it was estimated that every school library in America had an Amazing Amy book." There is also one scene in which one of the characters does some research on a public library computer. I can't even say much more about this without giving too much of the plot away, except that the passage demonstrates how important public access computers can be.

I was surprised by how much I liked this one. A good escape read.

It's All Relative-by Wade Rouse

Rouse reveals much about his lovingly dysfunctional family in this series of essays about holidays. He tells of New Year's Eve celebrations, Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, as well as some of the lesser celebrated days such as Arbor Day and "Swedish" Day. What he doesn't celebrate is National Library Week. He barely mentions libraries at all, in fact. The only essay that suggests the use of a library is "Spring Break: Heaven's Waiting Room" in which he describes befriending an elderly couple (Dottie & Ira) while wintering in Florida. They tell Rouse that they read his book America's Boy.

"Where did you get it?" I asked.
"The library"
"You should have bought it. I need the royalties."

Interesting then, that on his acknowledgement page he recognizes libraries "for promoting reading and keeping authors' work alive forever." 

A funny and touching book. One of the blurbs compares him to David Sedaris, the connections are clear in that Rouse is a funny gay guy who writes essays about his family. Rouse definitely has less of an edge, though. Rouse says he has never met Sedaris, but I have; he gave me some coffee cake mix at a book signing once.