Adit on Recent Great Reads

Hi everyone, I haven't written in quite a while. Blame the final exam. I just realized something in my blog. You might remember my post about hate crime; now, look for the previous post titled Adit on Ayat-Ayat Cinta Laura. Well, if I was any nastier on that post, it could've constituted a hate crime, couldn't it? But I didn't go that far, it's her fault! She keeps going around with that ridiculous accent, so she can't blame anyone for spreading them.

Anyway, during the Prophet Muhammad's Birthday and Good Friday holidays, I found myself reading a wonderful book titled The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. It was written by Mark Haddon. The book tells the story of Christopher Francis Boone, 15-years-old autistic boy living in Swindon. He's a math genius and he has photographic memory. On the other hand, he can't understand facial expressions other than 'happy' or 'sad'. He's also afraid of strangers.

The book is very interesting because the author succeeded in conveying the story through the first-person narrative, in this case, in the mind of an autistic boy. As the character can't understand emotions, people's facial expressions are symbolized by drawings. The story also goes here and there, jumping from one topic to another by each chapter (numbered only in prime numbers), while still keeping the whole stuff intact. At one point, he goes to a mathematical puzzle, and then he talks about other things. And then, to another, and back to the story.




The story itself is very compelling. It begins as Christopher discovered that his neighbour's dog was dead. He decided to solve the mystery of the murder in the fashion of his favourite detective, Sherlock Holmes. In the end, he investigated much more that the murder, including about himself and his broken family.

It's a recommended book for everyone and it had won the Whitbread Award. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it; in fact, the excitement motivated me: I finished in just two days.