March 1st

Day 61

Shutter Island - pages 112-236 (125 pages)

Goal - 8 books 177 pages

Total - 7 books 156 pages

Result - 1 book 21 pages to reach goal

Well, I've finished the book already, lol! It's really the type of book one can just fly through. In the end, unfortunately, it did follow along with the film, or vice-versa really. This post will have major spoilers, so read March 1st at your own risk!

Now that I can talk freely, I'd like to say that it was interesting reading such a book, with a twist in the same league as "The Sixth Sense", already knowing the big twist. Knowing the whole time that it's a big play-act for Andrew/Teddy to try to cure him really made me see it in a whole different way than I'm sure I would've otherwise.

The dialogue can even make sense if one thinks about it from this point of view - perhaps they were all trying to "fit in" with Teddy and his way of talking and his reality.

I do have to say though, knowing it already, the twist seemed EXTREMELY obvious from like near the beginning. Let me put that in perspective though, as I have a "mystery" background. My mother loved mysteries and so I grew up with them, Agatha Christie and so on. Plus, I grew up on logic problems, word puzzles, etc, and happen to be pretty dang good at them for the most part.

Just growing up in this environment I suppose moulded my brain to always look for solutions in every little mystery. I've always been adept at "figuring out" film mysteries ahead of time, if they give us enough clues. I actually didn't figure out "The Sixth Sense" ahead of time, but Shutter Island I had figured out watching the film before the halfway mark. Of course, not everything as it was pretty complex, but just that somehow Teddy was Laeddis.

Now, in the film things go by much faster so not as much time for thinking, but reading the book, I'm fairly certain I would've figured out the word puzzle part very early if not immediately at the first mention. Growing up doing word puzzles, and I don't mean a few here and there, but my mother had baskets of logic problem and word problem books that we'd do all the time, sometimes alone, sometimes in competition with each other. So I'm pretty positive my mind would've mentally rearranged Andrew Laeddis, being such an odd last name, pretty fast. And if not, the actual code clues, the first one with Laeddis' name, I'm positive I would've rearranged them into Teddy's name as well so I would've solved it there. And even past that, the last code clue "you are him", no doubt I would've solved it the minuted it appeared in the book.

OK, sorry for the detour, enough bragging. But I guess, there was an opportunity, so why not take it? :p LOL. Really, everyone has something they're strong at. Just as a matter of my mother's influence, that's one of mine. And I'm not even a huge mystery fan anymore, but when I read one like now I can't help but think about those sorts of things.

So all that to say, I have to wonder if others can figure it out fast? I just can't imagine some people may go to the end without figuring it out in this book. In the book he leaves so many clues that 2/3 of the way through, it's so obvious that it's ridiculous. I may just be saying that though already knowing the answer. So it will be interesting to see the discussion on it, to see how fast other people figured it out.

All in all, it was a quick read and somewhat enjoyable though it felt a bit recycled since I knew the plot already. And someone told me the ending was different so I was excited, but nope, it ends almost exactly the same way. But hey, it definitely helped me on my goal!