Details
Rent Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
Author:
Narrator: Simon Vance
Format: Unabridged-CD, Paperback
Publisher: Ingram Pub Services
Published: Jan 2007
Genre: Biography & Autobiography - General
Retail Price: $29.99
Discs: 6
Synopsis
Daniel sees numbers as shapes, colours and textures and can perform extraordinary maths in his head. He can also learn to speak a language fluently from scratch in a week. He has Savant Syndrome, an extremely rare form of Asperger's that gives him almost unimaginable mental powers, much like the Rain Man portrayed by Dustin Hoffman.
Daniel has a compulsive need for order and routine - he eats exactly 45 grams of porridge for breakfast and cannot leave the house without counting the number of items of clothing he's wearing. If he gets stressed or unhappy he closes his eyes and counts. But in some ways Daniel is not at all like the Rain Man. He is virtually unique amongst people who have severe autistic disorders in being capable of living a fully independent life. It is his incredible self-awareness and ability to communicate what it feels like to live in a unique way that makes his story so powerful.
Touching as well as fascinating, Born On A Blue Day, explores what it's like to be special and in so doing gives us an insight into what makes us all human - our minds.
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Reviews
This book reflects upon the machinations in the minds of people with Asperger's Syndrome very articulately and effectively. But even more importantly, it depicts the author's abilities and manners of learning to accept his own idiosyncracies and limitations while still developing self-awareness and self-acceptance. He is very aware of his most effective methods for learning and coping, and describes these in a way that encourages the reader's own self reflection. It is a lesson to us all and I highly recommend this book for those who want to learn about autistic people as well as themselves.
For anyone wanting to know more about Savants this book will provide a lot of insight. The author tended to go into painful detail about his thought process. While this detail clearly helps to understand Savants, it became so tedious that I was not willing to finish the book. I gave it three stars because the author certainly got across the intended message of what it is like to live with Savants.