The Curious Incident of an Unplanned Read

I suppose I've gotten so used to planning out my next few reads that a sudden divergence from the predictability becomes blog-worthy.  Not sure how I feel about that, but nonetheless here we are.

When Mark Haddon's The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-time hit the shelves around 2003ish, it was one of those immensely popular titles and nothing that anyone said could convince me to read it.  Not even the fact that my husband started reading it and kept telling me interesting tidbits.  It took me organizing and clearing my shelves some 8 years later for me to flip through it and hear myself think, "Hm. This looks interesting."

Those of you who've read it already know that it doesn't take long to read, which certainly helped to convince me to pick it up on a whim.  The problem was (apart from its über-popularity) that the topic just didn't sound interesting to me.  It isn't that I find the subject of learning-differences boring, it's that I had never read a book that made it so easy to understand and empathize with such a character.  That all changed before I'd read more than a few pages of Haddon's book.

One of the really fun parts of the book is the inclusion of drawings and diagrams.  The books is set up as if it is a journal of sorts--one that could eventually become a book.  I appreciated how the narrative voice belonged fully to the main character, and loved the combination of humor and heartache.  All those raving reviews that had me rolling my eyes and sighing in 2003, are actually right on the money, and I'm glad I allowed myself to be sidetracked from my chores long enough to discover that.

And.  Hopefully I'm getting a little bit better about reacting so strongly to outside influences! 8 years is just a little silly.