| Currently my insane fixation. Thank you, Vanessa! Image (c) jodipicoult.com |
Right now I'm reading a book I lent from a friend, Jodi Picoult's House Rules. I'm on page 131 as of now, which is about one-fifth of the book.
The protagonist, Jacob Hunt, is a teenager suffering-- wait, more like benefiting-- from Asperger's syndrome. I've read about it before in a Yahoo! News article that featured a twelve-year-old astrophysics wunderkind coincidentally named Jacob Barnett. Asperger's syndrome falls under the autism spectrum; people who have it possess atypical mannerisms and difficulties in social interaction. They engage in activities normal people don't normally do and have restricted interests. They sort of have OCD issues and hate it when things don't go as planned or when someone messes up the order of objects around the house. They have a hard time understanding figurative speech. Other symptoms of Asperger's syndrome are verbosity (hardcore talkativeness-- this way, I guess I have a bit of Asperger's too), pedantry and formal speech. In other words, kids with Asperger's syndrome always appear as if some old sage has been implanted into their small bodies.
Jacob (the character) is obsessed with forensics and talks a lot about fingerprint analysis in the book. I'm learning a great deal, actually, and I think I should have listed the facts he (or Picoult) states in his monologues. I haven't read enough to share the main plot but I'm already confident in recommending the book to you. Trust me, if you're a full-fledged geek and a die-hard CSI fan, you'll be drooling unto the novel's pages. I still have at least 460 pages of love waiting for me and a couple of Jacob's monologues. Oh, joy.
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