The Reason I Read

I read for a lot of reasons.  One of them is to understand how other people think.  I just read The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashda.  It is an excellent book about what it is like to one child to have autism.  The whole book is written in short chapters mostly answering straightforward questions - with a few short stories interspersed like just the right amount of spice in a fine dish.



I really like how straight-forward he is and how, even though he has problems, he really shows he loves his life and how autism allows him to see the world in a way that he completely cherishes.  The explanations throughout the book are clear and insightful.  For example, in the section where he answers the question about why autistic people seem to ignore people even when they are asking them questions... Naoki responds with an analogy about conversations being like landscapes.  It is something like this; he never knows if he should be focussing on the mountain in the distance or that tree branch that is close to his face... if you are the tree branch... he might be focussing on the mountain, so say his name to let him know he should change the focus for now.

There has been some discussion on the translation from Japanese and how he speaks as though he speaks for autistic people everywhere... I think not everyone who is autistic looks at the world the way his way... but he sees the world this way and speaks from that place (though I can't speak to the translation).  It is an interesting read at the least.

"So I do understand things, but my way of remembering them works differently than everyone else's.  I imagine a normal person's memory is arranged continuously, like a line.  My memory, however is more like a pool of dots.  I'm always "picking up" these dots— by asking my questions — so I can arrive back at that memory that the dots represent."  10
Not an AR book :(  but indeed a great read.