Inhale, relax, repeat

I forgot how much I love IRL shopping. I haven’t been shopping for a while, as I haven’t had reason to go to the city/I’ve been fixated on buying cheap CDs from Amazon, but even when it’s pouring with rain, I <3 IRL shopping.

I didn't buy much, but I did get this awesome shirt that could either make me look geeky as hell or super-cool. I was told not to buy it as it would be "too strange" to see me not in s t-shirt with a silly cartoon/picture/bright colours...but whatever. What's wrong with varying how you dress? I got CHOCOLATE BANANAS too. You never see chocolate bananas anywhere these days. Great reminder of my childhood, even though I never actually ate any until I was like...13. I got 3 books, lastly. I've been meaning to go book shopping for ages, and wanted to buy more, but I've got so many still to get through, as well as a whole pile of comic books, so I figured I didn't want to go too crazy. What I got was Sail by James Patterson, Contagious by Scott Sigler and Let the Right One In by John Advide Lindqvist. I wanted to buy some games, but I couldn’t decide on anything. I’m so picky with everything.

This post will be dull to most of you. Whatever.

The book in question is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. I find autism fascinating, and out of everything I am interested in about the human mind, autism is right up at the top. When I come to doing the dissertation for my psychology degree, I am going to try my damnedest to get something relating to autism/social intelligence.

So yeah, this book should have been a real winner for me. But no! It got so much critical acclaim, but I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it for 2 reasons:

1. It’s horribly boring. There are so many parts with boring, detailed descriptions of maths problems and such, and I can’t bear to read it. I understand the author is trying to make his character seem more autistic in doing this, but there’s just so much of it.

2. The protagonist is painfully unrealistic. The book was praised for having a “realistic” portrayal of a teenage guy with autism…but I’m not seeing that realism at all. People with the form of autism he is supposed to have (Asperger’s syndrome) don’t say “and” constantly. The repetition of certain words is ridiculous, and although it’s not all unrealistic, enough is to seriously reduce my enjoyment of the book. With regard to the character’s personality, likes and dislikes…it’s as if the author just thought up some “obvious” autistic traits and decided to give him them all. A love of maths and physics, an obsession with counting, an obsession with listing things. I could go on (but I don’t have an obsession with listing things!).

I haven’t finished it yet, but I will, however…even though it’s boring as hell. I hate not finishing books. This book is most definitely proof to me that critics dunno WTF they’re talking about. Best not take their praise so seriously ever again.

How odd, me talking about a book huh? I don’t read a massive lot of books, but I very much enjoyed this series…it was scary and emotional and written such that I could easily believe in all the odd creatures and happenings within it. What was the problem you ask? Well, within the final two chapters something happened that I could not believe, something that seemed to take away the credibility from this book and the previous two. What was that something you ask? The main characters (who were 13 years old) FELL IN LOVE. So for the final two chapters we’re left to read about their “heartbreak” about having to live apart.

Honestly, Mr Pullman, you ruined such a well-written and enchanting story with this. I am distraught. DISTRAUGHT.