Born on a Blue Day Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant : a Memoir

Daniel Tammet is a prodigy savant, of which there are apparently less than 50 alive in the world. His speciality lies with numbers and words. He has proven to learn a language in a week and learn more than 20000 digits of the number pi by heart in less than three months. Detailed review: http://michael.friess.org/review/2009...

** spoiler alert ** Sometimes, you can have a good story but ruin it with bad writing. And by ruin it, I mean run off in tangents about numbers and math and explaining black jack and just, ugh. And that's not to say anything against his life or hardships. I see that it is a memoir and I liked some of the explanations of behavior and how he had some issues. But, honestly, he basically told me long stretches of math that I couldn't follow, and then told me about how he managed to live entirely alone in a different country like any normal person, and had some random times where people told him that he was being rude and he immediately stopped the behavior so it was all together fine. I think the focus was wrong for what he was telling us. He really underplayed how he is encumbered in life. And that might be the result of his condition, or not wanting to sound like he has a lot of self pity, but I can't root for someone who gets nervous about ordering food. Welcome to my life, buddy. 😂 He did pretty good for himself. By the end he's even helping people study his condition. I just wish there was more of that and less boring childhood "drama" or jumping around his life before wallowing in music or something. He really needed an editor that made him write more to the interesting. And I think that lack of investment in his story really made it feel like work. At one point I almost shouted "who cares?" because no, I don't buy that it is really that hard for you to go grocery shopping because your skin gets hot from lights in a store. You joined a volunteer organization and literally went to a different country by yourself and talked up about how you made friends through a random gay society and learned a language in 2 weeks. It just doesn't add up to me, and I think that's why I didn't like it. Weird things at the end made it sound like he had a ton of issues living a normal life, but he lived a normal one in a country on his own with not one mention of these crazy issues. It just doesn't add up to a full picture of his life.

one of the best books I've ever read. It's gret!! I felt like I met a new friend. great job! it also helped me to meet myself better as an Aspie. thank you Daniel