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

I love this book to bits.  It reminds me a lot of unanswered questions I once asked myself when I was small yet I never got around to them simply because I didn’t want to be labelled as weird or stupid.  After reading this book, I realised  I was just plain curious back then and being one obviously makes me think more than I should. For better or worse? It depends.

This is a funny tale told in an oddly intelligent way  by Christopher, a fifteen-year-old, with autism.  The story starts off with the dog of Christopher's neighbour found murdered in the middle of the night and he decides to investigate who the murderer is.  He is encouraged by his teacher/mentor to write a book about his investigations.  Feeling emboldened for the sake of finding out the truth, he starts his investigating by talking to strangers, which is a big step for him considering his antisocial behaviour.  In the process of his investigation, he later finds out his mother is not dead, as claimed by his father.  Instead she lives in London with another man and for two years she has been writing letters to him, only to be kept from him by his father.  Angered and feared of his father's dishonesty and violence, he sets off his journey to find his mother, where a string of events take place during the journey, which I think they only make him braver and more in touch with the outside world like buying train tickets, getting a map and looking for his mother's address, etc.  It might sound easy to us but for Christopher, it is a big step.

As I am not familiar with how an autistic mind thinks so it only makes this book all the more interesting to me.  For the most part, I felt a strong sympathy for Christopher as a lot of times he struggles within himself to be normal yet he simply cant.  He doesn’t think and act like his normal peers.  He is into mathematics and science and his mind works better when he thinks in logic.  He doenst understand human emotions and he feels particularly baffled when people communicate using non-verbal communications like facial expressions and different kinds of gestures as he thinks they are ambiguous and more often than not he finds them incongruous.  He doesn’t get long sentences with excessive embellishment of adjectives and descriptive phrases as they find them rather distracting.  He is confused by sign which says "Be quiet" and feels it is ridiculously absurd as for how long one should stay quiet as it is not clearly instructed.  He resents yellow and brown colours and will not eat food that are touching each other on his plate.  One thing I find really interesting is he justifies why one should have food they like or hate because it helps you make choices easier when deciding what to eat.  There are some other behavioral problems or idiosyncrasies he has and for the most part, I just feel sorry for him when he is deemed incapable of understanding other people and get brusque treatment in return.  On the other hand, he makes me laugh out loud about  things he says and does - just weird but funny.

I think this is a book about how to overcome your fear to communicate and deal with the real world that you don’t seem to fit in.  As this story is narrated from the first-person perspective by Christopher,  we get to see how he feels in his world - the very same world  that we all live in -  in a different way and it is such an eye-opening experience reading a book about someone who is very different from the rest of us.

Book Review: Before I Fall By Lauren Oliver

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read Before I Fall, the debut novel by Lauren Oliver after reading Delirium, which I obviously cant stop raving about. Yet after reading Before I Fall, I just felt empty and so lost in reality so immediately I started off another book right away fearing that if didn’t it would have taken a long time for me to get out of the character, Sam.

The author Lauren Oliver has come up with a genius idea about what if you were living your last day, seven times. It is a book that you can easily whizz through, the writing style is swift and contemporary and the language crisp and smooth. This is a book that you can flip through fast with your emotions changing at the same rate. This is a book that makes you think about yourself, then others then the world and ultimately death. In a word, you grow with the main character, only we are dealing with our own issues. The more I read on, the more I fear the inevitable - the last day, the seventh day.

Personally, it is a good book to reflect on but given a choice I wouldn’t want to live my last day seven times because it is just too scary. It takes a brave person to think otherwise though and that is Sam, a sixteen-year-old girl, who seemingly has everything a teenage girl could ever ask for. She is popular, hanging out with "it" girls in school and going out with the most admirably dashing guy in school. Yet she dies in a car crash on a normal party night, only to find herself waking up the next day to the day she dies. Plus she gets to live the day 7 times and every brand new day, she lives it a little differently as she sees things anew from a more positive perspective. She realises how she has been distant from her parents and her little sister, whom ones she shared so much happy times with. Her best friend doesn’t seem to be as cool as she actually is and finding out her dark side leads to a misery of another girl, who, for years they have been mocking at in school. Her childhood friend, Ken, who is an obvious keeper, a potential and loyal boyfriend material, was shunned for years who now seems to be the right guy. People who she merely cares for or talks to are not disgusting to her anymore when she chooses to see another side of the story. As days go by, she changes her attitude to make atonement for what she has done wrong to people she cares or couldn’t care less. While I saw the change set in her gradually, I felt the same in me, not exactly like a major change but I could feel that I've made peace with myself, mostly on changes I have done, I haven't done and I couldn’t do.


It is the kind of book you should read if you think you are having a happy life, yet without knowing that you are being happy at someone's expense. If there is something you think you want to change in your life, perhaps try to look for that minute detail that you have always neglected in life and this book could offer you some insights. It is an enriching self-discovery experience reading such a masterpiece. It sure is a book that will linger in me for a long time and constantly reminds me it is never too late to make a difference even if this is your last day.


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Book Review: Divergent

I often have problems remembering story plots after reading a book since I am sorta a concentration-deprived person but this book is an exception. After reading it, I could still recall scenes after scenes accordingly right from start to finish, savouring all the bits that held me in awe. Ahhhh……

Divergent is exciting, well-paced yet intense, riveting to the point of throwing me into the spirals of thrills and suspense. I was totally sucked in. To be honest, I found this book a bit “draggy” at the beginning, yet the pace picked up soon after and since then I was captivated. The book was “unputdownable” , literally. It is a dystopian tale set in the far future in Chicago, USA. Apparently, it is post-war period where the country is still recovering itself from shambles and though it is not detailed in the book, the people seem to be kept within a compound bordered by gates. The current government segregates the people into five factions, namely Dauntless (The Brave), Amity( The Peaceful), Candor( The Honest), Erudite( The Intelligent), The Abnegation ( The Selfless) based on the ideals of how a well-governed country should build of to prevent from more wars and more disintegration in human kind. When one reaches sixteen, regardless of which faction you are from, you will go through a computer-initiated test where you face with simulated scenes to test you on all the five traits mentioned. The test result tells you which faction you belong to. However, you are free to choose any faction that you want as you will spend the rest of your life committing to the chosen faction. Since all five factions are separated, once you switch your faction, it means you are no longer seeing your family and your faction members. Beatrice (Tris) grows up as an Abnegation but all her life, she feels she doesn’t fit in like her parents and her brother, Caleb. She is torn between leaving her faction and family and choosing a whole new life ahead of her. When her test result shows she is a Divergent, meaning she fits in all the traits of three factions – Abnegation, Dauntless, Erudite with equal dominance, she is told to keep this as a secret. Now being a divergent is dangerous as the previous cases show that Divergents would be killed. It is revealed later that such aptitude test and simulation program are developed by an Erudite leader who wants to eliminate Abnegation due to some resource/ food allocation issues ( more than that, in actual fact). In order to do so, she needs an army and who could have made a better army other than Dauntless? Hence, she conspires with Dauntless leaders and develops simulation serum to be used in the training on the Dauntless initiates with the purpose of controlling their minds once they are injected with the solution. During the initiation, Tris goes through physical and mental training, namely combat training and mind simulation training to focus on overcoming own fear landscapes. She comes out on top finally. During the training, she falls in love with her initiation instructor, Tobias, nicknamed Four. The story is propelled to its climax when all the Dauntless faction members, who are now injected with simulation serum and controlled in their minds, are to follow the computer-generated instructions and head off to Abnegation to kill them off. Tris and Tobias, being divergents, are resistant to mind manipulation manage to terminate the computer system and escape with the hard drive that contains the important data to seek refuge in Amity. 

Divergent is a cleverly thought-out and well-planned story, written in simple and easy to follow plots which make reading such a marvelous thriller a breeze. Having said that, there are times when I had my heart pounding and screaming for the near-death experience both Tris and Tobias went through. The jumping-off-the-roof scenes, gunpoint scenes, and the fear landscapes scenes are enough to make Divergent a major cliffhanger. One thing that I find lacking in this novel is there seems to be less and if any, short conversations. I would love to read more witty repartee between characters yet Tris and Tobias are both not the chatty type. Tobias, especially is painfully inhibited with his words. Tris, to me, is not a very likable character as I think the change in her is abrupt and awkward. One minute, she is vulnerable and unsure of herself and the next she is gritting her teeth, getting vicious, wanting to punch someone in the face. The transformation from being a childlike smallish girl to a muscular and gun-shooting girl is a bit too much for me to handle. And it happens only in a matter of a few weeks time. Tobias, on the other hand, has a more well-developed portrait, which I liked. I am really glad that I read this book!

The author, Veronica Roth truly deserves a standing ovation for writing such a successful debut that accumulates so much fanfare that it is now being made into a movie! Really, really looking forward to the movie.

Book Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

I love bildungrosman/ coming-of-age books and a good one is really hard to come by, which is why I was so happy that I read Looking For Alaska by John Green.  This book reminds me of The Catcher of the Rye, for some reason. Perhaps both fall under the coming-of-age category with elements of juvenile delinquency and both are so well-written, in a different way, of course.  Yet this book is more than that.  You can only read it to know better.

Miles Halter, a sixteen-year-old high school boy, leading a life of boredom at his school with practically no friends, the kind of boy you might call geeky as he sure is.  He has a thing for famous last words and loves reading biographies to find out lives by these exciting people.  Motivated by  the poet Francois Rabelais's last words "I go to seek a Great Perhaps", he decides to leave home to start his boarding school life in Alabama, hoping to start seeking a Great Perhaps life ahead of him.  What follows is a journey of finding meaning of life, friendship and more self-discovery with a bunch of other amazing characters like Alaska, Colonel, Takumi and Lara. Each character has very strong personality that exudes teen charisma that is hard for you not to like.  Alaska is wild, self-destructive, moody, enigmatic yet highly intelligent, very likable and influential and she loves playing pranks.  The story revolves mostly around her and how the other characters come to terms with their inner guilt by "unraveling her mystery".  She is the kind of girl that you never get her and like she says, "That is the whole point."  Colonel is Alaska's best friend, also Miles' roomate and the bromance that they strike up at the later part of the story is one of the best parts of the novel.  So what is the great perhaps that Miles is looking for and whether or not he's found it and what would that be is up for the readers to ponder upon after reading it.

It is a beautifully-written story, peppered with so much dry humour that makes you laugh out loud.  It is also intense and heart-wrenching at the same time.  It has everything a good novel has - a mixture of everything yet so relevant, which makes the story all the more gripping.  There are so many quotable quotes that will leave you think about even after a long time reading it.  The conversations between the characters are witty, funny and so authentic and they don’t at all sound like ignorant, angst-ridden teenagers and there is always something you can relate to in their experiences.

There is so much goodness in this book that I don’t even know how to start nor where to end.  There are a lot of heart-felt moments in this book where you would close your eyes and give it some thoughts before moving on. Also, it explores aspects on how some world religions bring out their respective message to the world and how it can or cant be achieved.  Miles' answer to the question posed by his world religions teacher, which was initially asked by Alaska,  as to how will one ever get out of the labyrinth of suffering is perhaps the Great Perhaps he's been looking for all this while?  Or perhaps not now but somewhere later in his life where the Great Perhaps may come in different shapes, sizes and manifestations.  Whatever it might be, it must have something to do with beauty.

It is a great read and definitely deserves a re-read for me to discover more Great Perhaps!

Book Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Are you in love now?  If yes, then if love were a disease, would you want to be infected?  If love were a disease, would you want to be cured? My ultimate question is, to you - you personally - "Do you think love could be a disease in the first place?"  These are the questions that kept swirling in my head while reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver.

Love is always a timeless concept used in all forms of art, mostly portrayed in all ways possible to be romantic and even poetic especially in novels.  We often have conflicts in loving, but not exactly love itself since love is abstract, a mere concept, it is the loving that we have problems with as it straightaway deals with the issues in the process of loving someone or something.

Delirium deals with love, a head-on confrontation to deny its existence by using scientific ways to curb it, which means love, as a disease,  has to be cured so one is rid of the concept "love", feeling to love and be loved.  Love should be denied in the first place.  End of story.  This happens in a dystopian world set in USA where it is divided into mainly two territories, one free of the disease yet ruled in a controlled, totalitarian-like society and the other one, populated by the Invalids who are against the government simply because they want to love.  So in this supposed love-free society, the government has made it mandatory for all citizens upon 18 years old to undergo certain medical procedure to be cured of love and at the same time be assigned to a job and a spouse and spend the rest of their lives by playing their role well. Having said that, those below 18 are under the threat of catching the disease.  Severe rules are reinforced to ensure that it is a love-less society such as any signs of showing extra love to your children are prohibited, couples who are too loved-up will  be arrested and to go through more remedial procedure to get cured.  Lena, having a mother who committed suicide due to the disease, has been looking forward to getting cured so she doenst end up like her mother.  Yet at the same time, the memory  of how her mother showed her love that makes her feel warm and loved contradict her decision sometimes.  Lena could have got her cure and become an unfeeling person living a loveless and painless life, only she falls in love with an Invalid, Alex. Her life gets haywire since...

I enjoyed reading this novel a whole lot because it was so beautifully-written, so poetic and it completely took my breath away.  Here is one quote, created by the author:
 “ ’What is beauty? Beauty is no more than a trick; a delusion; the influence of excited particles and electrons colliding in your eyes, jostling in your brain like a bunch of overeager schoolchildren, about to be released on break. Will you let yourself be deluded? Will you let yourself be deceived?’ –On Beauty and Falsehood, The New Philosophy, by Ellen Dorpshire"

Having said that, it is not a love story per se.  I loved reading Lena's memories of her mother and how they spent time together.  Little did she know that it is the most natural feeling one has when being with someone you love and care for.  As much as she realised later that her mother was very much inflicted with love, the disease, the loving moments they had are embedded in her memory.  Imagine, as a child, when you feel upset, the last thing you want to get from your parents would be a nondescript facial expression and unfeeling emotion.  It is the love her mother showed her that makes her baffled as to whether love is as deadly as she has been told all the while.  It is later revealed to her that the world that she has been living all her life is full of fake lies propagandised by a totalitarian-like government.  People have been brainwashed with ideals that are non-humane with emotional detachment.  Human being is prohibited to love and be shown with love and if violated, it is a deadly crime.

Such propaganda that aims to bring human being to a loveless and emotionless community is deadly.  All the brainwashing to influence human minds itself is dangerous as it tends to standardise human beings as a collective uniform robot, mindless and thus easy to control.  Realising this fact just makes me a little more wary of the world I live in, the political views I originally held, the ideals I once believed in and even the media where I get all the information from because we are what we believe in and what believe in is normally what we are educated about.

All in all, it was a great read.  I love the concept where it suggests that love is a deadly disease to be cured to assure lifetime happiness and harmony.  The concept itself is refreshingly new and original and the story is told from an angle where the female protagonist, Lena battles with her inner self whether to trust her head or her heart and what and who to believe in.

Book Review: Bittersweet by Danielle Steel

Half way through the book, I was already feeling daunted by the predictable plot and the hackneyed character development.  In a word, it was a yawn. Yet, i still ploughed through the book till the very end.

Bittersweet is a tale about a fortysomething homemaker, India, who is a former award-winning photojournalist, now happily married to her husband, Dough for 17 years, at least she thought they are.  They have four happy kids and a regular home life that is admirable to everyone and for 17 years India has led a monotonous life, though she still feels there is always a place in her heart for photography but for the sake of her family, she knows she has to compromise.  Instead of bracing her way in the deserted jungles or war zones, she is now taking pictures of her kids' soccer games and doing car pools.  A conflict arises when she is tempted to take up an assignment but Dough has been adamant of not letting her do it and he also makes it clear that it is the deal that she made once they got married, ie she was to be a stay-at-home-mum.  India feels stabs of pain when Dough says to her point blank that he doenst love her anymore and there is no point in romance after being married for years and her role is to take care of his kids and nothing more.  India is torn.  This is when Paul Ward, a wall street tycoon, comes into the picture and offers her a good solace she has been wanting to get from her own husband.  The camaraderie that they shared over the summer has blossomed into many friendly phone conversations and heart-to-heart talks.  Paul is especially against the way Dough treats India and he not only offers her a shoulder to cry on, he is fully supportive of her pursuing her dreams, which only makes India more courageous to stand up to Dough when they have arguments.  Though they both have secretly developed feelings for each other, they brush it aside and prefer to do the right thing which is to stay faithfully married to their spouse.  Then Serene, Paul's wife, dies in an airplane crash.  Paul retreats into his yacht and spends months on sea to mourn for his loss.  More phone conversations ensue.  India is sure by now that she likes Paul more than she thought and Paul, haunted by nightmares and plagued by survivor guilt, makes it clear to India that he could never be "her light at the end of the tunnel".  India, in the midst of a divorce crisis with Dough, feels devastated and knowing that her little fantasy of being with Paul is now shattered has been a double blow to her.  They still stay as friends and when Paul decides to come to visit India after months of sailing, the chemistry sparkles once again between them and Paul and India take the plunge into this relationship and are so loved up for A WEEK when Paul, suddenly freaks out and thought it is a mistake to start the relationship with India.  He is constantly gnawed by his conscience for surviving Serena and the haunting dreams he has make him feel like a betrayer. At the same time, the prospect of rising four potential juvenile delinquents puts him off too.  So he leaves India and tells her not to call him anymore. This time round, India is completely crushed, even more so from her previous marriage to Dough.  

India, now divorced with four kids, with her ex-husband in the midst of marrying his new girlfriend,   Paul's leaving is an insult added to the wound.  All the emotional torments she has undergone have toughened her up especially after she survives a car crash.  She becomes a renewed person and she channels her energy into taking care of her kids and taking up assignments.  By happenstance, she meets Paul again during her assignment in Rwanda, they both agree to rekindle their friendship.  From the conversations they have, it is evident that India has grown up more mature and she talks about how her right guy would be the one coming though the hurricane for her.  Paul, obviously still very much in love with her, is in self-denial again saying his perfect woman is his late wife, Serena, while battling within himself to say it is her, India.  After the assignment is done, both go back to their separate lives until one day Hurricane Barbara threatens to hit her place and Paul comes through the storm to find her.  The story ends in both embracing each other, standing in the storm.   Pretty predictable, no?

I give it three stars even when I think the plot is cliched and it is so predictable.  Having said that, there was some surprise thrown in here and there for good measure and it makes reading this book a good experience though I have to say it is definitely not a page-turner.  I love the portrayal of India in Bittersweet by DS in the later part of the novel when she has come to her senses.  All the while, she is the one doing all the giving and loving but in return she gets a broken heart.  Now she is more assured of herself and knows she deserves better, which makes her even more dazzling to Paul. India is one strong character that many career-women-turned-homemakers would be able to relate to.  I am not at all warmed up to Paul's character in as I think he is indecisive for a man of great achievement and living in self-denial has made him look weak.  

Overall, it is an okay but not a compelling read.

Book Review: Who’s that girl? by Alexandra Potter

This is my first of Alexandra Potter’s and i have to say i truly enjoyed reading it. I was drawn to this book mainly by this tagline “If only you knew what you know now”. Also, i am exactly that kind of girl who would always play time-travel either to my past or my future so i thought this book might be my cup of tea and it turned out just as that. Before i read this book, i wondered how the author would spin a time-traveling tale in a modern age setting as time travel is physically impossible unless there is some magic, i guess. Whether it is just a figment of Charlotte’s imagination or the morphine effects done to her brain, we are not sure. In fact, has she really met her twenty-one-year-old self in real life? No one can tell. however, the main concern here is Charlotte, now 32, after meeting her 22-year old, she has changed back to the person she had always wanted to be – the jovial, live-in-the-moment girl who holds onto her passion, which is writing. Looking at her 32 self, which is a far cry from what she had wanted to be, she starts to have all the reflective moments as in is she making the right choice to move in with her current boyfriend which she realises she isnt in love with. Also, it then dawns on her that she had never thought of being a PR person, let alone owning a company. All her current allergies are probably come from being over-cautious to food and her health, which she didnt give it a hoot in her 22-year old self. If meeting her younger self changes her life, rekindling the relationship with the barman who had secret crush on her ten years ago makes her life complete.

This is a tale which is completely funny, relatable (esp if you are a thirtysomething) and definitely makes us reflect on our current life and also looks back at our younger years when we are almost fearless, spontaneous and laugh like there is no tomorrow.
As much as I love the story, I thought it would have been even more compelling if only there is more appearance of Oliver in the book as I think his character is not vividly painted out to readers. It is a such a likable character that it is a shame he doenst deserve more limelight.