the curious incident of the dog in the night-time

mark haddon

finished this book up yesterday. took me about half the day? i think? i highly recommend this book to any math or logic inclined person out there who's interested in a light read. the main character is autistic, is obsessed with math and prime numbers, always tells the truth, and has other personality quirks that he periodically explains throughout the book, because he feels like folks should explain themselves to be logical. but he also goes into the lives of his parents, and portrays how they react to him and whatnot. it's quite insightful, to say the least. and haddon keeps you interested because some new information is being thrown at you at every which-a-way, a sort of stream of consciousness if you will, and exactly the kind of book that i like to read. (it keeps me interested...) for example, if christopher (protagonist) talks about a certain math puzzle he's been thinking about, like the pythagorean theorem, he'll write the equation out and write out what he was thinking. he also shows the reader what kind of patterns are on fabrics, a picture of a cow, etc, etc.

unlike my post on "animal farm", instead of going off on some politico-inspired rant (i reread it this morning, and WOW, i must have been angry about something!), i think i will post a quote that really jumped out at me:

• "Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."

there were many notable quotes in the book, but this is the most important one in my opinion. to me, it just makes very good sense and is quite true. and plus it deals with numbers, and i really like numbers. you can explain the world in numbers!