Booklog #3

I hope you've had a good week...the weather here has really gone downhill, with gale force winds, driving rain and all the fun that is winter in Wales.  What better excuse could there be to stay in of an evening and curl up with a book?  Not that I need an excuse of course..! 

This week I have a sneaky surprise 'started it and finished it' entry for you in the form of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.  It's a former Whitbread Book of the Year and is well-known for its autistic teenage narrator.  I'd always thought that I wouldn't mind reading it but never got round to buying it, or knew anyone who had it that I could borrow it from, but on Friday a chance discovery brought the two of us together! 

For my day job I work for our local police force - as a civilian, not as an officer - and my department is within one of our main divisional HQs.  While lunching with a friend on Friday she asked if I'd seen the library yet.  Library?  What library?  It turns out we have a sort of 'trust library', where people donate books and they're stored in the atrium (where some of the lunch seating is) for anybody to take, read and return (that's the trust part!).  And fair dos - there are three units with five shelves each and they're not only full but also neatly arranged into genres...someone has been busy!  We browsed the shelves and my friend recommended Curious Incident to me and I recommended The Ice Cream Girls (Dorothy Koomson) to her.  I started it on Friday evening and was hooked - had I not had to go out to a university tutorial on Saturday I probably would have finished it that morning!  As it was, I finished on Saturday night - possibly a new record, as although I do read fast I'm not usually that fast.

I won't drop any spoilers here as I really do recommend it to everyone, but I will say that it is funny and sad and moving and educational (both about autism and about maths!) all at the same time.  It's very cleverly written, in such a way that you recognise various things happening slightly before Christopher, the narrator, does.  I felt that this was a good thing as it meant they were still a surprise to you, but that you also then got to witness his realisation and reaction separately to your own, so that becomes part of the story too.  He's a very interesting character and you really do want everything to work out for him.  Though of course I won't say here whether it does or not...  ;o)

I give Curious Incident... 5/5.  Everyone should read it! 

And now for this week's 'I'm still reading' list:

The Redbreast ~ Jo Nesbo
The Children's Book ~ A.S. Byatt (up to chapter 20 now, following a massive push!)
Angels ~ Marian Keyes
Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett (I decided to start reading it rather than watch it on TV first)

That's all for now - thanks for reading, have a great week! 
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