The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

This is an odd (and recent) novel by Mark Haddon. I picked it up because I was looking through the shelves at a used book store and remembered seeing the title on a list of 1000 "must read" books. What makes it unique is it is "written," I'm guessing, by an autistic savant. I have to guess, because a specific problem is never actually mentioned, and my knowledge of mental defects is rather limited.

Anyway, I think the main goal of this book is to give the readers a sense of perspective. Other than that, it has sub-themes of love, patience, self-reliance, accomplishment, and basically all the trash that lesser novels (that don't make lists) have.

I can only say that this is not an enjoyable read. Nor is it a book that is going to blow your mind. A person can quite easily go through this book, hate it, and not realize that it has anything important to say. Personally, when I got to the end, I spent quite a while trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to have learned from this before I came up with the idea of "perspective." This is probably why the book store I visited had over a dozen copies of this book that were "used" but practically brand new.

Anyway, if you pick this up, don't be ashamed to chuck it out the window when you are done. If you spend some time thinking about it and come up with some new revelation that is better than "perspective," please let me know.