November Book Club - Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet

The next book club meeting will be on Wednesday, December 2, 2015 at 7:00 PM at the Prater's home (2000 Malvern). The book will be Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet.

The publisher's blurb reads:

Bestselling author Daniel Tammet (Thinking in Numbers) is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life and able to explain what is happening inside his head.

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.

NOTE: The membership of the book club voted to change the regular meeting date for the club to the last Wednesday of each month. For November, the date was shifted back another week to avoid Thanksgiving eve.