A Foray into Fight Club

I recently finished Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk (that's a rough one to spell correctly). And when I say I finished it, I mean I spent about the last four months intermittently reading it and then putting it down because I wasn't a big fan of the plot line or the content, or I just wasn't hooked enough.

When I first started Fight Club, I knew just a few things about it. I knew that a movie adaptation of the novel was fairly popular, which I hadn't seen and probably never would, and I knew the first two rules of fight club. The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.

So with that, I dove in. I won't summarize Fight Club, because Goodreads can do a much better job of that, and out of fear of spoiling the ending for anyone. (That being said, always be careful of reading book reviews on forums like Goodreads and Amazon if you don't want the ending spoiled for you.) If you haven't seen the movie yet, read the book first. I'm not always a big stickler when it comes to books before movies - I don't really believe that a movie can ruin a book or vice versa - but in this case, do the original work a favor and experience it the way it was intended to be experienced. This book has plot twists galore, and there's nothing more fun than hypothesizing about what you think will happen, or having your jaw drop while you're reading the last fifty pages. (I correctly predicted the biggest plot twist and was awfully proud of myself.)

So after all this, what did I actually think of Fight Club? I'm still not really sure. I gave it three out of five stars on Goodreads (check out my profile here). I didn't necessarily dislike it, but I wasn't crazy about it either, mostly because it simply isn't my usually preferred genre for reading. (I'll be honest, I'm a bit of a Jane Austen girl - give me some romance and a bit of tasteful drama, and I'm in love.) But one of the best and most useful measures of a good book, whether or not it's your favorite genre or if you don't like the content, is if you're still thinking about it a few days, weeks, and months, after you've read it. If you forget about a book after you read the last page and put it down, then it wasn't a good book. And in the case of Fight Club, I'm still thinking about it.