*I finished up reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I like reading books that are written in a very conversational tone as opposed to fancy pantsy prose. But what I also noticed was that several of my favorite books are about or narrated by psychotic or otherwise borderline mental cases: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Hah, maybe I relate well to crazy folk, hahaha.

Anyways, the book is narrated by a boy with Asperger's syndrome, which I guess is kinda comparable to autism. It's written so you feel like you're inside his head. And the book is littered with mathematical and logic problems that just make you think a lot. For example:

The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek words meta (which means from one place to another) and ferein (which means to carry) and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor.

...but if "metaphor" is a metaphor, then it no longer describes something it isn't, right? Which means it's no longer a metaphor? If it is what it isn't, then it isn't what it is??? Catch-22. I musta spent like 2+ hours straight turning this phrase around in my head to make some sense of it.

The book also brings up the Monty Hall problem:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say number 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say number 3, which has a goat. He says to you, "Do you want to pick door number 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?

...the answer's not nearly as simple as at first appears. You'd think it'd be 50/50 either way, but it's not! I had to do like a rigorous mathematical proof before I accepted it, and even then I still didn't want to believe it. I think what throws things off is the fact that the door the host shows you isn't random (he can't show you the correct answer or what's behind your door), so standard probability procedures don't apply. Try it out and be amazed.

Anyways, the book is spattered with all kinds of fun stuff like that. It's got pictures and a weird chapter numbering scheme too. A very quirky book indeed.