IMA READ

So I read a few books recently. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is about a 15 year old autistic nigga in the trap out in the UK area just tryna make it (he wants to be an astronaut and pass advanced courses). The unique thing about this book is that it's written in the 1st person through a kid who is devoid of what many of us find to have at all times. Things like articulation of emotions and complex human relationships this boy cannot grasp. He makes up for this with his incredibly enhanced command of logic and understanding the world through facts and reasoning. So you get to see how he sees the world and the awkward situations that those traits might bring.

It's supposed to be a mystery book, which is one of the reasons I bought it because I usually don't enjoy reading fiction (in fact this has been the first fiction book I have bought or even read in quite a few years I reckon) and I had encountered it before in my senior english class in high school but never got the chance to read it but the premise sounded intriguing and when I flipped through it had a whole bunch of pictures and diagrams which I was thought was keen to being a fun and refreshing reading experience. They merely serve however to illustrate and help communicate what the boy is seeing in his mind.

By the middle however it become obvious that it's not really a mystery, more so a book on how complicated and fragile human emotions can be and how weird and laughable it might seem from an objective point of view. Overall however, it was a decent and short read. Definitely had some funny bits and heart touching moments towards the end and is quite an active reading process in terms of just comprehending the way the boy is comprehending and comprehending that comprehension.

Conveniently enough Blink by Malcom Gladwell includes a section about how Autistic people can't perceive human relations rapidly (or even at all) and focus on entirely different things when observing humans interact. This is what the whole book is about, the ability that your unconscious brain in funneling in information and making decisions based off that gathered information. It highlights the power that you brain has in taking tons of data at once and quickly sorting it all out unconsciously and, and how at times it can be used to your advantage or detriment. This is quite a good read I must say, having lost his other best selling book The Tipping Point about 3/4 of the way through reading it when I was in Thailand I'm a big fan. Luckily I had this book in case and it turned about to be truly fascinating.

Malcom Gladwell is a fantastic writer and does a great job using real stories and scientific studies that help display the lessons he has to offer about an extremely valuable capability that our brains possess and how we can tweak our environments to foster it. Definitely a must read for anyone interested in the mysteries of how our brains operate.