a few good reads...

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-09-2005
a few good reads...
7
Mon, 09-04-2006 - 10:10pm

Hey,

Thought I'd pass along a few good books (fiction)that I've read recently. They kind of fit the topic here.

Eye Contact by Cammie McGovern

This book is a murder mystery (it was in the M section of my library) about a 9 year old autistic boy who witnesses the murder of a classmate. Most of the book centers on his mother and her attempts to get him to open up about what happened. I liked it because of the realistic portrayal of what it's like being the mother of an autistic child, the loneliness, isolation, ups and downs. I didn't realize it when I got the book out of the lib, but the author IS the mother of the autistic child. There were several other characters I could really relate to as well. Good book. I started this book on Friday night, and read it all day Saturday (cause it was a total washout in eastern PA) until I finished it.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

This book is about a 9 year old boy who lost his father in one the towers on 9/11. He found a key in his dad's stuff, and he is trying to find the lock that it goes to. He travels all over NYC, asking alot of different people, trying to find it. One of the reviews I read before I got the book called the kid "quirky", and when you read about his quirks, I think they'll ring a bell to some of us. This book was GREAT..it touched on the grief of losing a parent, 9/11, being a kid. It was very sad, but it was also very funny.. particularly one part where the kid was seeing his psych and the guy tried to do word association with him. I read this book on the beach in SC while on vacation..and I cried my eyes out.

When ds was first diagnosed, I read every book I could get out of the library or find in a local bookstore about AS. Some were good, some were not so good. I kind of got burned out on the subject, and on reading in general. Now I'm trying to get back into it. So if you have any book suggestions, please pass them along!

Kate

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2006
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 10:12am

Some interesting Asperger's books I have read:

A Slant of Sun
Finding Ben
Eating an Artichoke

These seem interesting but I haven't read them yet:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The Asperger Parent: How to Raise a Child with Asperger Syndrome and Maintain Your Sense of Humor

Anyone read any of these?




Edited 9/5/2006 10:26 am ET by threewonderfulboys
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-07-2003
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 12:37pm

I read
The Aspereger Parent :How to raise a Child with Asperger Synfdrome and Maintain your sense of humor. I liked ti.It waas written from the Dad's prospective since he is the main parent so to speak. But It is not as much a How to book or dishing out advice. It just tells you that it is okay to feel anger, saddness, just the wonders etc. And it more about the parent not so much as the child. lets face it we focus so much on the child we forget about ourselves. This book is telling you that it is okay to focus on you.

The other book I read is Hitchhiking Through Asperger's Syndrome. This is more of an advice book. What is good for many of you is this mom has a now 20 year old man with Asperger's. So she has already lived it. And the fact is her son was dx'ed before people really new what it was. But she did the diet thing. The homeschool route etc. She does advocate for thios a bit in her book but she does not say it is the end all.

Quirky Kids was another good book

I may look for other books as I go along but i thing I prefer easy to read books that don't go with a lot of statistics or says that this is the only way to go deal
I prefer books that give many different ideas for me to blend intro what works for me.

Rina

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-19-2005
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 1:28pm

Hi Kate,

Thanks for posting these. "Eye Contact" looks very interesting to me. I just finished reading "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time" (also fiction and a mystery)which I found both intriguing and sad at the same time.

I had been putting off reading it for awhile, several mom friends with ASD told me it made them cry. But one of Eric's teachers said it was the best thing he had ever read in terms of helping him understand how ASD kids think, so I finally got up the nerve.

It is a good "read" as far as mysteries go. But the narrator, a teenage ASD boy, just breaks your heart. Very familiar territory.

I had been mostly reading non-fiction medical or parenting advice books about autism and there was something kind of liberating about reading fiction. I'll try to look for Eye Contact. I also really like Temple Grandin's books, if you haven't already read them.

Katherine

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 7:05pm

Jonathan Safran Foer is one of my favorite authors right now. I really loved "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," and yes, although the main character is never labeled ASD, it's pretty clear that's what the author was going for. I also loved "The Curious Incident..." which I just finished!

Jennifer

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-09-2005
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 9:23pm

I just got "The Asperger Parent: How to Raise a Child with Asperger Syndrome and Maintain Your Sense of Humor" from amazon today! So that will be next. But ds's pokemon book didn't come.. uh oh..

I did read "The curious incident..." and it was great. I thought reading fiction with autistic or AS characters would make me a little sad, but they didn't. I think that's a credit to the authors.. the characters seemed real to me, not like something out of a psychology text book.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

Kate

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-07-2003
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 9:41pm

I a not to sure myself. I used to find watching Monk to be fun, now I am not finding him quite that amusing. And he is supposed to be OCD, but man the similarity between that and Asperger's is well very eeerie to me. On theother hand Star Trek with the various aliens such as Mr. Spock and Data I can still handle them and their quirks.

Rina

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 09-06-2006 - 12:28am

I recently watched part of "As Good as it Gets" again and this time I found it very hard to watch. There was too much Mike in that movie for my taste. It made me sad how he was teased and ridiculed like how everyone clapped when he got kicked out of the restaurant. Good movie but, ug.

Fiction-
Loved "Curious Incident...". That one is very Mike too but we gave it to the inlaws to read and it was the first time ever they "got" Mike and were more understanding. Makes it rate really REALLY high in my book for that. We give out copies often to folks. They are more likely to read a fiction story than something non-fiction so it helps get the understanding of Mike out there without pushing it too hard or boring them.

"Speed Of Dark" is ok. NOt my fave but ok. It is about an autistic man in the future and he is given the choice to accept or not a cure for his autism. It is also a mystery.

Dean Koontz had "By the Light of the Moon" with a more severely autistic character. The book is really good read but he makes the mistake of saying this guy is possibly aspergers. No way the guy was AS, he was definitely classic and bordering on severe.

I hear "Daniel isn't Talking" is ok. I don't think I can read that. parent perspective and too close to home still. I don't think it would make an enjoyable read.

Non-Fiction life stories.
Loved "Finding Ben" because of it's honesty and the fact that it is a more comprehensive. Most books by parents are written now when their children are still young. Ben is my age and this goes all teh way into his adult life. Also, I found it very interesting to read what a mom went through before they even knew what Aspergers was.

"Raising Blaze" is pretty darn good too. Particularly for the alphabet soup type kids. I believe Blaze finally is diagnosed with PDD-NOS type thing but it is one of those where he doesn't really fit neatly into a spot though I have heard lots think his is somewhere on the spectrum.

Recently got Temple Grandins "Animals in Translation" and I just CANNOT get into it!

Educational type non-fiction.

The list would be way to darn long for what I like of that. Right now I am reading "More than a Mom" about being a mom of a special needs child. I have mentioned it too many times already. Awesome book. I highly recomend it for any mom. After that I am going to read about parenting your down syndrome baby, lol. Seriously. My friend has no other down syndrome parents to understand and relate to her so my next goal is learning all I can about DS so I can hopefully be a surrogate for that kind of friend.

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