Last post

I have now finished reading the book and I have written all of the posts, so I will not be updating it anymore. This assignment has been very fun and I would like to do something like this again! :)

Blogpost #5 - The Finale

I have just finished reading this book, and it was absolutely amazing,
In this last part Christopher finally makes it to his mother's home, after sitting at the train station for hours trying to calm down since he was scared of the noises that the trains made when they came.
One thing that I thought was pretty ridiculous was that he actually jumped on the tracks just to recover Toby, while it clearly said on the screen that the next train would arrive in just one minute. I understand that he cares about his rat, but to risk his own life doing it? I wouldn't.

Anyway, once he arrives his mother is very happy to see him, but he doesn't really return the feeling, since he doesn't let her hug him at all. I thought he would be much happier to see her, since he felt very sick and sad after finding out that his dad lied about his mother dying. This makes me wonder if he ever actually feels sad and cries in social situations, or if he only cares about things like his grade A Maths test.
If I had found my mother after 2 or so years, I would be ecstatic and crying of joy, meanwhile, Christopher only seems happy about the fact that he escaped his 'dangerous' dad.

After Christopher has stayed with his mother for a while, I realised how abusive and how bad of a man Mr.Shears is, and I did not understand why Christopher's mother would move in with him and start a romantic relationship with him.

Christopher's dad isn't very happy with the fact that Christopher left him to stay with his mother instead of him, but Christopher does not want to live with him, so he and his mother move into the father's house without Mr.Shears. I though this was a very good idea because the whole family could live in Swindon now.

In the beginning, Christopher didn't want to speak with his dad at all, but bit by bit he opens up and his father gives him a dog called Sandy. I think that giving him a dog was very nice and even helpful, since he now would have a friend again (Toby died :( ).

Overall, this book was amazing, but as Sandra said, I probably wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who gets easily bored or distracted, as this book contains lots of details that can get you confused or bored if you do not understand what he is talking about. Other than that, the storyline was very interesting and was a change from what I usually read! :)

Blogpost #4 - Pages 166-220

Hello everyone!

This is the fourth blogpost I have made so far, we are only 1 blogpost away from the end of this project! This book has been amazing so far, as well as funny and sad at times.

These last few chapters I've read have been very intense and interesting. While reading them I felt worried for Christopher, I'll explain why later. In the last blogpost I explained that Christopher wanted to run away from his home to go live with his mother after he found out that she was still alive, in these chapters I followed him on his journey.

When we left off last time he was talking to Mrs. Alexander about taking care of Toby, which she couldn't do so he had to bring the rat with him. I felt sorry for the rat since he would have to stay in Christopher's pocket for a whole day! That couldn't have been fun for him. Christopher decides to leave since he thinks his father is dangerous and might kill him, and I think it was quite weird that he would think that his own father could kill him.

I feel like if I saw Christopher in real life when he was escaping to London I would feel kind of weirded out, since he keeps on talking to himself, groaning and barking at people to scare them off. He does all of this to keep himself calm though, and can sit for hours solving math problems in his head just to clear it. I could probably never do that, I would think it was boring and give up after 3 minutes or so.

In these chapters he has to talk to a lot of strangers to figure out which train he has to take to get to his mother in London. These strangers did not know that he is autistic, so when they said stuff like "take the tube", Christopher had to ask them what it means, which caused them to think he's stupid. Even though they weren't aware of his condition, they could've been a lot nicer about it instead of saying "You're a real piece of work, aren't you?" or "Are you for real?", it makes me wonder if everyone in England is that rude...

Throughout the pages I kept wondering about what would happen if Christopher gets lost, he wants nothing to do with his father, and there are policemen looking for him everywhere, trying to get him back to his dad. The fact that Christopher happened to step off the train at the London station was a coincidence, if he didn't go out to check if the policeman was still on the train he wouldn't have ended up in London.

I couldn't really relate to anything Christopher went through in these chapters, but I still thought they were awesome as usual! :) 

Blogpost #3 - Pages 110-165

Hey!

Now I have read about 3/5 of the book, until page 165. These chapters were full of interesting dialogue, and you found out A LOT about Christopher's family as well as Wellington's killer...

In the first few pages of this section Christopher goes looking for the book that his father hid away somewhere. I thought that he actually threw the book in the trash or something since he went outside with the book in the last chapter. When Christopher finds the book in his dad's closet I felt very relieved. There have been many times where I thought that something had been thrown away or lost, and I get very nervous.
Christopher also finds multiple letters addressed to him stashed away in a shirt box.

I did get a bit nervous when his dad came home though, since I thought that Christopher would get caught, causing his father to become angry at him again, which wouldn't have been so nice.
He manages to slip away and reads the letter... from his mother.
For some reason I kind of saw this coming, when a person dies you do get to go to the hospital to say your final goodbye, plus, there was never any funeral! Christopher's dad's story didn't really make sense, so I thought something was up with his mother.

When Christopher doesn't even consider that his dad might be lying to him, but instead thought that these letters were for another Christopher somewhere in Swindon, I got a little annoyed. It was quite obvious that his dad was lying about his mother leaving the family to live in London with Mr.Shears.  I do kind of understand that Christopher didn't piece it all together, since he has Asperger's Syndrome.
After reading all of the letters from his mother, he gets a stomachache and feels sick, which is the first expression of sadness he has descibed in the book. He doesn't say he was sad, but his symptoms describes his feelings pretty well.

After his dad confesses to lying and killing Wellington, I didn't get very surprised, his father had been really mad at him for trying to figure out who killed the dog, so I suspected he was the one who did it. Christopher however, gets very upset and thinks that his father might be able to kill him too, so he decides to leave Swindon to go live with his mother. At this point I felt very worried about Christopher, since he's never travelled anywhere on his own, and it feels like he's going to get lost on the subway.

This book is still very interesting and page 165 kind of left me on a cliffhanger, so I'm going to continue reading now!

Blogpost #2 - Pages 55-110

Hey friends!

Sorry that this blog post is late, but I was sick so I didn't have access to my book, which was in school :(

Anyway, time to review the chapters I've read this week!
I thought this part of the book wasn't as interesting as the first part I read last week, the reason for this being that Christopher writes a lot about stuff that isn't really connected to the main story. This is sad because last week I wrote that these were my favorite parts of the book.

I found out why Christopher hates the colors yellow and brown, and it makes more sense now, before I thought it was kind of weird, but at the same time understandable.

It was quite a shock when I found out what Mrs. Alexander told Christopher about his dead mom. I never could've suspected that she would be in a relationship with Mr.Shears. What I did suspect was that Christopher would go around trying to find out more information about the dog, which is exactly what he did.

Because of his detective work, Christopher and his father get in a big fight when his dad finds his book. The dad finds out that Christopher had talked to Mrs.Alexander since he wrote it in the book. I feel like his dad could have been more understanding, he didn't have to hit Christopher. Yes, he did hit his father first, but that is because the father grabbed him really hard, which Christopher doesn't like because of his autism.

After the fight, his dad actually tosses Christopher's book, which I think was horrible. I have had that happen to me too, even though most of the times it was unintentional. When something that you've worked hard on for a long time is gone, you feel disappointed and sad, it doesn't really seem like Christopher is that sad though, since he has a very good memory.

Something that I like about this book so far is the fact that he doesn't always know how to say a sentence, for example "he made a poop", and "they did sex". It makes the book a bit entertaining.

I still really like the book and it's story so far!

Blogpost #1 - Pages 1-55

Hello classmates!

So far, we have found out a bit about the main character of the book, Christopher. He is a 15-year old boy with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. 
Christopher is super intelligent, and knows a lot about mathematics, but when it comes to understanding people, he knows nothing. He often speaks with a lady called Siobhan, which I can only assume is his therapist or the school counselor.

 When I read about the dead dog Wellington, it made me wonder who would stick a fork through a dog's chest, and what were their motives?
When Mrs. Shears came out and screamed "What in ****'s name have you done with my dog?", I was a bit surprised and confused. Did she really believe that Christopher, an autistic, 15 year old boy who loves dogs killed hers?

A bit later when the police arrives Christopher hits the police officer asking him about the dog, since he doesn't like it when people touch him. This made me feel sorry for Christopher, since he can't help it and the officer arrested him anyway. I liked this scene of the book a lot since you can now sort of understand what is going through autistic people's minds.

One of the things that I like about this book so far is the chapters when he explains stuff, for example why he always tells the truth in the book, prime numbers, and metaphors.
 Overall, the book is great so far. It's funny, charming, and you really get a peek of what life of an autistic person is like. The author himself doesn't have Asperger's syndrome like the main character Christopher, but the descriptions are realistic and accurate. I also like the little pictures that are included, it makes understanding the difficult problems Christopher explains easier.

Next week I will have read until page 110! I look forward to it!

Introduction to the blog

I'm going to be reading "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon as part of my English Book Assignment :)