more lessons learned

[schmerica]

a. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a brilliant book, yo, and I recommend it highly. Word Freak, while not brilliant, is still a quite enjoyable read. (With regard to the latter: somehow I suspect fandom has piqued my interest and sympathy for freakish obsessive subcultures.)

b. Kiffles are the best cookie ever. Mmm. They're another one of those foods, like gratnuckels and holupkies, that as far as I know only exist in Slovak church cookbooks. Church cookbooks are highly flawed in a number of ways, but if you can actually figure out what the instructions int he recipes mean, there's some yummy stuff hidden within.

c. Wrapping presents can be quite fun and relaxing, in a seriously mindless way.

Comments

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

What's in a kiffle?

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

There's a dough made of flour, sugar, butter and cream cheese, which is rolled into balls and chilled, and then each ball is made into a circle and rolled up around ground walnuts. As I said, quite yummy.

[runpunkrun]

I keep reading glowing reviews of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and they keep saying the same thing about the dead dog and the retarded child, and I keep being strangely unmoved by that.

But, you're saying it's brilliant. Can you tell me why I should read this book? I'm willing to be convinced.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm not sure I'm any good at that kind of thing, frankly. I'm often not much better than going "I like it! Because, uh, it's good!" But, hmm.

So, yes, the first-person narrator is an autistic teenage boy -- not retarded, exactly, because he's intelligent, but he doesn't function normally, he doesn't understand people, he's obsessed with order and patterns and logic. The dead dog thing is what starts the book, but the book's not really about that; it's about the boy and his life and family and the world around him, filtered in through his mind. It does sound, from that description, like it could just be gimmicky or boring, but it's really well-done and very good.

So. That's all I got.

[runpunkrun]

Okay, thanks. That does help. I might give it a look, now. All those reviews I read recommended it, but they didn't say anything that made me want to read it.