Book Recommendation: Gone Girl

I read quite a lot of books (probably about one a week on average). I am fairly selective about what I read-- while the "finisher" in me used to have a hard time giving up on a book a bit of the ways in once I'd committed to picking it, I now find my free time MUCH too valuable to waste it reading a book I don't enjoy.  I now am known to abandon books which, 20-30 pages in, are just not hooking me. And I don't write too many "you must read this book" recommendations, because I know people really have varied tastes and, as it is with movies, not everyone shares my (arguably strange) tastes.

I have a book that will surely hook you and is one of the best reads I've read this year-- Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. It was so popular that I had to wait about 6 weeks before it was available from the county library, and then I only got to have it out for a one week loan due to the large # of holds!

Because I'm too busy reading good books to write original book reviews, here is the "blurb" from the
author's actual site, which is also posted on Amazon.com, where the book, which stayed atop the NY Times Bestseller list for many (although I'm not sure exactly how many) weeks, was deemed one the editors' picks for "best books of 2012" (a distinction with which I wholeheartedly agree) :

Marriage can be a real killer.
   One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work “draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.” Gone Girl’s toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.
   On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?
   As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?
   With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.

The language of the book may put some of you off. However, it is very well written-- very witty, very gripping, very twisted, and will keep you turning pages late into the night.  I am excited to check out Flynn's other two books (which she wrote before this one):  Dark Places and Sharp Objects.

If you end up reading this novel, let me know what you think (and, if you like it, let me know what other book recs you have for me based on our shared tastes!)!

to love/lose a dog

In case you need a tearjerker, here are two sad stories from this week...

1.  Sea rescue
Last weekend, three family members died trying to save their dog (who actually did survive) from the Pacific waves, about 20 miles north of us near Big Lagoon, where we went kayaking last year.
You can read about it on national news here and here.
I imagine I would try to save Pep from water, too.  Would you go after your dog?
I am thinking about the young girl who lost her whole immediate family. Keep them in your thoughts.

2. Loving and Losing a Dog
Reading this CNN article has to make anyone realize how valuable is the love of a family pet, especially when one doesn't have children. I already feel sad thinking about the day when we will lose Pep.

I don't think anyone can prepare you from losing a family member you love-- and family members definitely include dogs (read: Marley and Me, Art of Racing in the Rain.) Sniff, sniff.

Thanksgiving, Part Two (celebrating with our Oakland Family)

 Serena, me, Hanh, Wai Kiu

After flying back from MN, we stayed overnight with the Lees at our Oakland area "hotel" (their home) for a night. On Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, they hosted a potluck dinner which reunited several of our residency friends. The Lees are really like a second "family" to us, and we were thankful to see them over these *holidays*.

We had a delicious feast that included roast beef tenderloin with a mushroom/wine sauce, roasted red potatoes, salad, butternut squash soup, sauteed asparagus, a squash casserole, apricot pie, and ice cream (and possibly more, but I may have forgotten some due to the food coma that ensued). Yum!

 

 Kya, Tim (up from SD), Serena, and Brad

the group

Sophia (8.5 mo) and Brad

 Shabu, Serena/Brad's shih tzu (and Pepper's friend!), came along from Davis

Mason (one week shy of 3 years old!) was chill as always...

... and really enjoyed his ice cream!

 The next day, Apurva (K's college roomie) came up from San Jose to hang out with us and the Lees.

Vietnamese "breakfast" (some sort of noodle soup)

We then went to help Wai Kiu (and Mason) pick out a Christmas tree for their high-ceilinged living room.  

  

 

 

Unfortunately, we didn't find the "perfect one" and came away empty-handed, but it was still a fun adventure!  Thanks again to our dear friends Wai Kiu and Hanh for being our other "family" and for a wonderful continuation of the holiday :)

A Minnesota Education

We are now back in Arcata.
Kelvin learned a lot of things while in Minnesota this past week.

They included:

The state is flat
Before we left CA, we made sure to bring an ice-scraper (which we weren't sure would be provided by the rental car companies). Kelvin asked me if we'd need chains (obviously associating them with snow; we once drove an extra 500 miles because we forgot about the Sierra Nevada mountain range). We most certainly did not need "chains" while in MN, as the state is so flat you can see for hundreds of miles. We did run into a bit of snow on our last evening there, but the roads were still incredibly easy to drive (compared to our winding Hwy 101/coastal road to/from our town of Arcata). We learned about the north-flowing Red Lake River (somewhat atypical) which tends to flood when this area warms in the spring but Canada is still frozen tundra, and because it's so flat.

People hunt 
K and I were both pretty surprised when bearmeat was part of our Thanksgiving dinner.  I informed him (and he deduced from the multiple hunting/fishing stores up here, Cabelas being one) that many Minnesotans (my cousins included) are really into hunting.  At Thanksgiving dinner, someone asked us, "do people hunt up by you in CA?" I honestly couldn't really say. I don't think people go hunting in our woods (we probably have some law against that), but I couldn't be sure. We certainly aren't hunters. I think we in California are so hippie-dippie that we generally think hunting is inhumane and go more for slaughtering grass-fed cows/organic chicken raising/oyster shucking/clam digging/abalone diving. 

The liquor thing
On Tuesday, we went to Hugo's (grocery store) in the evening to grab some wine for our Thanksgiving day dinner.  Even after traversing all the aisles, we couldn't find any wine. When Kelvin asked a grocery clerk if the store sold wine, he received an emphatic "NO!" for a reply and was slightly taken aback. So we found an actual liquor store down the street a bit where we purchased our couple of bottles and were educated by the owner there that indeed, MN has laws prohibiting just any store for selling alcohol (of any substantial %).  I guess you can only buy it from dedicated liquor stores and only before 10 p.m. or days other than Sundays. As I obviously am not and never was a big drinker (including medical school where pretty much all I had time for was studying and frisbee ;)), I did not recall this fact about Minnesota.

Religion matters
K was very impressed with the sheer # of churches we saw in every single town we passed in MN. Fisher, a town of 400, has two Lutheran churches and one Catholic church. This church:population ratio, fairly remarkable, seems to be fairly constant among most MN townships.

Salads are different
In Minnesota, salads aren't always salads. Casseroles, jello desserts, and iceberg lettuce can all constitute "salad." Be careful what you expect from a "salad bar."


Meal names
Breakfast= breakfast. In Minnesotan, "lunch" means a snack, "dinner" means lunch (noon meal), and "supper" means dinner (evening meal). This confuses me, and I lived there! Kelvin was more than confused when conversing with my grandma about meal plans. People definitely have accents, and my family has accents like in the movie Fargo. 

Gas doesn't always make sense
Please tell me what's wrong with this picture below. Can you take a guess which grade gas we picked to fuel our rental car?  We were just thrilled to pay less than $4/gallon.
 

Glad my honey learned a thing or two about the Land of 10,000 Lakes. 

A Fargo (and frosty) Thanksgiving

 The Arness Girls (Jacky, me, Amy, LeAnn)

Fargo, Food, Family, (Football), and (snow)Flakes. That was our Thanksgiving this year.  While my parents and sister are on the East Coast and K's family is all in SoCal (or Vietnam), I really do feel lucky to have an extended MN/ND "family" with which to spend holidays (and who are always gracious about hosting). While I wish we could ALL live within 2 hours of one another to have big family get-togethers (it is holidays like these that make me envy people who marry people from their same hometowns or at least the same state and whose family all lives within a 2-hr radius because I feel and will probably always continue to feel "divided"), I am thankful to have had the week off and be close enough to see my relatives here.

 LeAnn (my dad's first cousin, formerly an "Arness") and her husband, Brad, hosted our family dinner at their new house (designed and built from scratch last year; it is LOVELY) in Fargo. Although a [small] MN storm was brewing which worried Grandma (and the high-in-harm-avoidance hubby), we did convince her to join us.

Marilyn (my great aunt) sweetly gave me a birthday present of some MN mugs and I got some Holly Yashi earrings (bought in Fargo, but from Arcata! A huge coincidence!) from Amy and the other "Arnesses."
 

This layered pumpkin cake was apparently also in my honor (Thanks, Amy!) although we already had TONS of yummy Thanksgiving desserts including my favorite, pecan pie.

 Marilyn, Jacky, me

My cousin Richard provided some "bear meat" (seriously; he shot it in Alaska) which tasted much like roast beef.

(Kelvin digs in)

We had a delicious spread including turkey, stuffing, (bear), yams, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, lefse (Norwegian potato flat bread; awesome with butter & sugar), and desserts galore.

 

us with Dyno, Heather, and Grandma

We left town fairly early due to this...

... Kelvin's first *real* snowfall. While the roads weren't too bad, we did almost hit a deer on the way back on Highway 75.  About 1.5 inches accumulated in Crookston.

And then it dropped to temps in the teens, continuing until the morning we left.

 

 Yikes! Among other things, I am thankful for a warm coat (and that I currently reside in a much warmer state)!

a very happy birthday

 

"What do you want to do for your [31st] birthday [Wednesday]?" asked Kelvin.

Not being very into birthdays in general, I replied, "Hmm. Let's take a day trip."

I remember going to Itasca State Park (about 1.5 hours east of Crookston) many summers as kids, where we got a big kick out of "walking across" the Mississippi River.  As you can see from this marker, Lake Itasca, MN is the origin of the mighty Mississippi River on its >2500 mile path to the Gulf of Mexico. Since we weren't anywhere close to making it to the midwest landmark of Mt. Rushmore (see previous post), I decided that this would be a fun Minnesota "attraction" to show Kelvin.

 

(We were slightly obsessed with this sign in case you couldn't tell)

Good thing K wore his trusty Bogs, in case he should take a plunge off the stepping stones (which he didn't).

Crossed safely!

Here is K, "testing the waters," (or actually very thin ice). Temperatures were quite warm-- it was in the 40s, and the lake was DEFINITELY not frozen over.

We wandered a few of the short nature trails in the park, including to see the "Big White Pine" which reminded us of our very own Avenue of the Giants.

This sign marks a bison kill site from 8500 B.C.

The main Visitor Center bathroom had cute Itasca factoids on the walls/stalls.

Pretty lake views

While I don't like to make a big deal of birthdays or presents, K did get me an iPad as an early birthday gift. It was a great gift, as, while I don't think I would have decided to *splurge* on it on my own, I really enjoy it and it's great for travel.

Here is me in our bedroom in Arcata, browsing on my new toy before bedtime, with my favorite companion, Pepper, our Christmas "gift" to eachother last year.

After returning from Itasca, we hung out with my grandma for a bit at her apartment and went out to dinner at a local diner (RBJ's) for some birthday "supper" to conclude the relaxing  *vacation* day in MN (I can't remember the last time I was "off" for my birthday, which coincided with the Thanksgiving holiday this year; usually I am working!).

Later in the evening,  around 10 pm, which is my usual bedtime, I was watching some TV in our hotel room last night when I came across Gone with the Wind on TMC. Now, you should know that I RARELY can stay awake past 10 p.m. K and I never go out to movies that start after about 8 p.m. as, regardless of how good the films are, they turn into very expensive naps for me. However, last night was different. Perhaps I was well rested (I *love* weeks off!). Perhaps it's because Gone with the Wind is a fabulous movie, and definitely one of the greatest of all time (in my opinion); it just happens to be a coincidence that the O'hara plantation is named "Tara" (although pronounced differently than is my name). I have watched it many, many times but not anytime recently, i.e. in the past 10 years or so (which makes me feel really old!). In any case, last night I was hooked and finally, after 1 a.m., when the 4-hour movie ended, with a long-asleep husband, and when it was no longer my birthday, I finally went to bed. A day off (actually week off!) from work, a tourist attraction, the great outdoors, warm MN weather, an iPad, a husband, a grandmother, a great movie.... I'll say it was a happy birthday.  I am so thankful (Thanksgiving post to come later).