You may not know this about me (in fact… there’s probably no way you could know this about me so I retract that last statement) but I read at around 1000 words per minutes (apparently). So, due to this probably pointless skill that I have, I read books A LOT. And when I say a lot I mean, I probably go through around two novels a week.
My latest conquest (and that’s a bit of a lie because I’ve read 1.5 books since this one) is The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen.
Now, my list of conquests is high, but this is honestly one of the most thoughtful, quirky books I have ever read.
It’s about boy-genius mapmaker T.S. Spivet, who lives on a ranch in Montana. He is only twelve, but he spends every waking moment mapping everything he sees or experiences into colour coded notebooks. The story is a coming of age story about how he views his life, and how he comes to terms with the world.
T.S. one day recieves a phone call from the lofty Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., they inform him, that he has won the Prestigious Baird Award and needs to come to Washington to accept and give a speech in front of the congregation. The only problem is, the man on the line doesn’t realise that T.S. is only twelve.
Thus, the young hero, catches a lift in a freight train to Washington, and the book follows his amazing journey across the country.
This is one seriously eye-opening and hilarious book. Being of ‘abnormal’ brain function myself (and when I say that I don’t mean I’m a genius like T.S. QUITE the opposite), I seriously connected with this boy and his crazy way of viewing the world. The book is full of his illustrations, maps and diagrams so it’s a very different reading experience. It takes a while to get use to stopping in the middle of a paragraph to read an annotation, but I learnt to love it.
Though the main character is only twelve, this isn’t really a book for children. Not because the content is particularly adult but because T.S.’s vocabulary and general manner of thinking is so advanced (I learnt a lot in this book!). Larsen really does an amazing job capturing this supremely intelligent mind trapped inside a boy who loves cowboys, dogs and McDonalds.
I could not recommend it highly enough. You have your choice of blue, red or green copies (to match his colour coded notebooks). I myself have the green copy 
If you’d like a preview head over to the website The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet for a look. This is one amazing website in it’s own right!!
xo. Happy Reading!
C. Wednesday Thursday
I know that she reads this blog, so NO MORE will be revealed.
