Am I the only person in Australia who has not read Gillian Flynn's marital thriller Gone Girl? Not quite but it does feel that way, with the novel on the Australian bestseller list for much of its two year-life and more than 138,000 copies sold here and 1.7 million in Britain. I have avoided most conversational spoilers, but now I've seen David Fincher's film adaptation so all is revealed. It's a stylish thriller about a lying, cheating, obsessive couple, played by beautiful Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike (who somehow morphs into Bridget Jones for a while) with a lot of blood and at times verging on the ridiculous (there was some hysterical laughter in the cinema). I wonder how anyone can bother with the well-written, 450-page novel once they know all its secrets but Hachette has a new film tie-in edition flying off the shelves. Flynn, who lives in Chicago, has been invited to every writers' festival in Australia but recently had a second baby, so the hope is she will visit in late 2015 or 2016.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

The organisers of the Stella Prize for women's writing have for a third year calculated the ratio of books by men and women reviewed in Australian newspapers and journals. After finding male writers and reviewers dominated the field in 2011 and 2012, they note "there is still much room for improvement". I don't choose reviewers or books by any strict gender quota, though it is one factor in the mix we try to achieve. Even so, in 2013 the Herald slightly increased the share of books by women to 43 per cent and female reviewers to 52 per cent; The Weekend Australian remains blokey, with women only 35 per cent of authors reviewed and 29 per cent of reviewers. Women fared best in the Adelaide Advertiser, West Australian, Sunday Tasmanian and Books + Publishing magazine, which helped compile the figures.

SCI-FI TREASURES

The estate of science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury was sold at auction in Los Angeles last week for $US493,408. Bradbury, who died in 2012 and was the author of the book-burning novel Fahrenheit 451, had an impressive collection of art and animation. Some of the prices went way over expectations: A painting by Dean Ellis for the 1969 cover of Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, was estimated at $US10,000-15,000 and sold for $45,894; a surrealist painting, Carnival by Mugnaini (a friend and collaborator), sold for $23,153, which was 10 times the estimate. Bradbury's 2004 Hugo Award for science fiction brought $28,734. Other items included original cels for Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and a spade that had belonged to George Bernard Shaw and inspired Bradbury to write an unpublished poem.

GRANDPA WAS A ROLLING STONE

We're all getting old when Keith Richards writes a children's picture book for his five grandchildren. Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar tells how his musical grandfather,Theodore Augustus Dupree, one day handed Keith a guitar, showed him some chords and challenged him to learn to play Malaguena. Richards writes (with help from Barnaby Harris and Bill Shapiro) that he thinks of Gus every time he walks on stage with the Rolling Stones. The book is illustrated by his daughter, Theodora Richards, and includes a CD with music from Richards, whose memoir Life was a critically acclaimed bestseller.