Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Curious Story Indeed

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

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“I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.” I’m not sure what I expected from this book, but to say I was pleasantly surprised is putting it mildly.  This book languished on my TBR for over a decade.  I don’t know why I avoided it, but I just never got around to picking it up.  I ended up listening […]

The Curious Incident of the Convoluted Plot

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

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My thoughts on this book are… messy. On one hand, it is refreshing to see a book narrated entirely by a character with ASD. On the other hand, Haddon did not research prior to writing the book, saying “imagination trumps research.” Plus, the novel doesn’t even commit to the diagnosis. There exist many undiagnosed kids and adults, but it felt peculiar in these particular circumstances that Christopher, our narrator, never even has the possibility floated. On one hand, what Christopher puts up on the regular, such as […]

Spot on

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon

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I was pleasantly surprised re-reading this book, fully expecting it to go to the resale pile as I remembered very little about it other than that it was a mystery about a dead dog solved by a teenager with autism. I was even less enthusiastic after reading House Rules (see previous review), which very much read like a book by someone who was trying very very hard to understand autism rather than someone who actually did. That’s the difference between the books though, Haddon reaches […]

CBRBingo – History/Schmistory – Creative and fanciful and thought provoking

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon

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Though I have a list of books to read for CBR Bingo, and stacks of books in my house unread, that certainly doesn’t stop me from checking out the NEW shelves at my local library: I mean, I’m not a monster. So, on my latest stopover to get books with the kiddo, I saw this shiny Mark Haddon novel calling my name. I read both A Spot of Bother and A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time and though I couldn’t for the […]

It took me 11 years to finally read it. Worth it.

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Christopher likes to go walking at nighttime where the world is quiet. There are no people to overwhelm him and he can take his time to see all the things, but one night when he goes out he finds his neighbour’s dog dead, killed with a pitchfork. Christopher likes logic and he likes dogs, so he decides to become a detective and figure out who killed the dog. His father is not pleased by this and forbids Christopher to investigate, but for the first time […]

A truly lovely story

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My friend K had chosen this book for October’s Book Club (ummm, how long ago did I read this now? I don’t even want to think about it. I’m seriously [A] that far behind in my reviews and [B] that far behind in my reading goals. November has been a horrendous month for many reasons) and even though I’d read it eight or nine years ago, I was delighted to give it another shot. I’d remembered reading it and really liking it, and faintingviolet’s recent […]



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