Born on a Blue Day

This short audiobook of about 7 hours by Daniel Tammet, an young Englishman who is a savant with Asperger syndrome.  The audiobook is performed by Simon Vance, who has a British accent; the reading is steady and reasonable.  He makes Tammet an interesting narrator, which is quite an achievement since large portions of the book are about numbers and Tammet's synaesthetic experience and love of them.  The rest of the book is about his life as he grew up in London with several brothers and sisters at schools where he was frequently misunderstood and had a hard time.  Tammet is high functioning as a person with Autism, but he used to have a great deal of problems with social interactions.  Now he has a happy and productive life, living with his partner and having been featured in the documentary Brainman.  Born on a Blue Day is an interesting memoir because it helps non-autistic people to better understand what it is like to have Asperger's, and it may well help some readers identify with some of Tammet's difficulties in interacting with other people.  Even those of us who don't qualify for a diagnosis may well feel that the Autistic spectrum extends to us too.

Links

·         Daniel Tammet website

·         Brainman documentary

© 2010 Christian Perring        

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York