1:57pm August 13, 2014

Someone sent me a copy of “Thinking In Numbers”.

I did not expect to like it. I am not a numerical thinker, I do share some synaesthesia with Daniel Tammet but he’s always struck me as someone whose basic thought processes are really hard for me to keep up with.

I am now three chapters in and totally enthralled.

One thing I love about this book: It is not about autism.

It is written by an autistic man, and autism goes all through it, autism pervades it the way autism pervades any autistic person.

But it is not about autism.

It is about an autistic man’s special interests.

And it is clear he is passionate about numbers and languages.

And he writes about numbers, languages, and other things that captured his imagination all the way from childhood until now.

And he writes with so much depth and passion.

And it’s so nice to read an autiebook that’s not about autism, even though it sort of is about autism, but it’s not…

It’s not… “Here I am. Look at how my mind works. Let me dissect myself for you. Do you want to see my liver or my spleen? I will vivisect myself for your entertainment.”

It’s more like… “This is really cool, and so is this, and let me tell you about this other cool thing.”

It’s not an autobiography, although it contains autobiographical information in parts.

Everything comes back to languages and numbers, which are his special interests.

And it is so much more interesting than most autiebooks. It’s sort of like when Dawn Prince-Hughes published her gorilla journals, that was so much more interesting than Songs of the Gorilla Nation which was more straight memoir. I strongly recommend Gorillas Among Us: A Primate Ethnographer’s Book of Days, as another amazing book written by an autistic person about their special interest without it being about autism at all, yet autistic attention to detail is all through the whole thing.

(Warning for anyone getting into her work: I love her, I really truly love her, but she’s a white woman fascinated with ‘modern primitivism’ and that mentality gets into a lot of what she does, so be warned before you pick up a book of hers. And yes, she equates 'modern primitivism’ and 'tribal’ things with gorillas and other primates, and doesn’t see the problem. OTOH, she does amazing beautiful things that nobody else is doing, and has a connection with gorillas that few humans have because she is autistic and because she learned her social skills from gorillas. I’ve met her, she moves like a gorilla. Primates who speak sign language spontaneously use the sign for “gorilla” when referring to her, instead of the sign for human. I take the bad with the good when it comes to her work. Because there’s so much of both, and they can’t be disentangled, and the good is so good and the bad is so bad. Be forewarned, it’s all I’m saying.)

Anyway I love when I pick up a book that I expect to be meh about and end up entranced by it. This man’s interests are not my interests. But he makes them my interests, temporarily. By writing such detailed and beautiful and evocative stuff about numbers, he makes me care, and that makes a good book. I can’t wait to finish it, if I can sustain the focus required (which has been a real problem for me lately, for some reason).

Anyway, if you’re interested in a book by an autistic person that is not primarily about autism (but where their autistic traits show through in their special interests), Thinking In Numbers seems really good so far. For some reason I’ve tended to avoid stuff by Daniel Tammet, but now I’m not sure why I’ve been avoiding it so much. This is good stuff, it’s well-written, and it’s well-edited.