Thumbs up for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Literature.
In a nutshell: The first-person account of an autistic teenager who decides to solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor’s dog. There are the people who read this book seven years ago when it came out; that constitutes nearly everyone who reads at all. Then there is the group of people who read, but would never read this book, because it is not Napoleonic history/paranormal romance/Garrison Keillor/chemical engineering or whatever their specific shtick is. To them I have nothing to say. Then there are the lazy readers, like myself, who know the book perfectly well because how could you not? but have never got around to actually opening it. To those I will say: It is charming and well-done and you can read it in two hours. And it is probably a pretty good use of two hours.
Mr. Jeavons, the psychologist at the school, once asked me why 4 red cars in a row made it a Good Day, and 3 red cars in a row made it a Quite Good Day, and 5 red cars in a row made it a Super Good Day, and why 4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don’t speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don’t eat my lunch, and Take No Risks. He said that I was clearly a logical person, so he was surprised that I should think like this because it wasn’t very logical.
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