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A review by jenbsbooks
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
medium-paced
3.75
For those who need to know ... YES, the dog dies. This is set up as a mystery to find out who killed the dog, but it ends up uncovering a lot more.
As with many of my books of late, I had this in all three formats ... physical book, Kindle and audio. I went primary with audio, which was good, but looking at the text, there are things there that don't translate to audio. I didn't really miss all the illustrations in audio, but there are a LOT. Also some different ways the text is presented. Super short chapters, and because our MC is autistic and he is writing this book, he decides instead of simple chronological chapters to only use prime numbers (so that chapters run from 2-233). These little chapters are listed in the audiobook ... but there's really no chapter breakdown in the TOC in Kindle (which makes it hard to find my spot when moving between formats, have to flip through a lot). No TOC at all in the physical copy.
Right off, the "voice" is different. The slightly stilted, absolutely factual and direct reflection. I've read another book (The Eagle Tree) from the mind of an autistic child, and this reminded me of that. In "regular" writing, I'd get annoyed with the constant "he said" "she said" but here, I know that's just the way Christopher thinks. He isn't flowery, using a thesaurus to change up the "said" to other options (commented, replied, cried, shouted, answered, announced, etc...) nor to use simple dialog without listing the speaker. Simple/straight-forward presentation.
One might do a quick double-check ... the author of this book isn't named Christopher, right? No, this is a novel, and while nothing at all paranormal, it's just that little bit beyond completely realistic to have it be "real" ...
In the book, there were some notations - in kindle, a click will take us to a back page where a footnote explanation is given. In the physical book, these footnotes are just at the bottom of the page. In audio, they are just given immediately (a pause, an aside, and back to the story). I do prefer the audio presentation and think most of these could have (should have?) just been included in parenthesis in the text (I don't like to have to stop and check the footnote). I do agree with though, that the math proof should simply be referenced and included in the back in the appendix IF the reader does want to check it out (but not included there in the text).
I enjoyed the story - the mystery that starts about who killed the dog, and ends up unraveling SO much more. The unique voice was an interesting change and will make this memorable. There weren't any discussion questions included IN the book, but a Google search brought up several study guides, which I always appreciate, as they often make me delve a little deeper or think about things I might not have with just a quick read on my own.
While YA, there was a bit of proFanity (x28) and some simple talk of sex (nothing explicit/descriptive ... remember our narrator. Straight-forward). First person. Past tense.
As with many of my books of late, I had this in all three formats ... physical book, Kindle and audio. I went primary with audio, which was good, but looking at the text, there are things there that don't translate to audio. I didn't really miss all the illustrations in audio, but there are a LOT. Also some different ways the text is presented. Super short chapters, and because our MC is autistic and he is writing this book, he decides instead of simple chronological chapters to only use prime numbers (so that chapters run from 2-233). These little chapters are listed in the audiobook ... but there's really no chapter breakdown in the TOC in Kindle (which makes it hard to find my spot when moving between formats, have to flip through a lot). No TOC at all in the physical copy.
Right off, the "voice" is different. The slightly stilted, absolutely factual and direct reflection. I've read another book (The Eagle Tree) from the mind of an autistic child, and this reminded me of that. In "regular" writing, I'd get annoyed with the constant "he said" "she said" but here, I know that's just the way Christopher thinks. He isn't flowery, using a thesaurus to change up the "said" to other options (commented, replied, cried, shouted, answered, announced, etc...) nor to use simple dialog without listing the speaker. Simple/straight-forward presentation.
One might do a quick double-check ... the author of this book isn't named Christopher, right? No, this is a novel, and while nothing at all paranormal, it's just that little bit beyond completely realistic to have it be "real" ...
In the book, there were some notations - in kindle, a click will take us to a back page where a footnote explanation is given. In the physical book, these footnotes are just at the bottom of the page. In audio, they are just given immediately (a pause, an aside, and back to the story). I do prefer the audio presentation and think most of these could have (should have?) just been included in parenthesis in the text (I don't like to have to stop and check the footnote). I do agree with though, that the math proof should simply be referenced and included in the back in the appendix IF the reader does want to check it out (but not included there in the text).
I enjoyed the story - the mystery that starts about who killed the dog, and ends up unraveling SO much more. The unique voice was an interesting change and will make this memorable. There weren't any discussion questions included IN the book, but a Google search brought up several study guides, which I always appreciate, as they often make me delve a little deeper or think about things I might not have with just a quick read on my own.
While YA, there was a bit of proFanity (x28) and some simple talk of sex (nothing explicit/descriptive ... remember our narrator. Straight-forward). First person. Past tense.