Who am I?

I grew up in a home where my parents read books, lots of them. Some of these books were read over and over while others were placed on a shelf and left to gather dust. I imagine my parents read to me and taught me to read. Then I started exploring their shelves and found friends.

Books are super friends. They helped me navigate in the world and have a place to turn when things got too confusing.

As an adult I was told that people who were autistic could not like fantasy because they had no imagination. This was an expert stating this. It kind of made me wonder how well the professionals and researchers actually know the autistic community. Not very well, I imagine.

As an aspie, stories that illustrate different takes on how the world works or might work help me understand people much more than my school text-books did. My psychology, sociology and philosophy studies gave me invaluable knowledge, but they were all theory. Good authors, who write about pretend situations, clarify the various theories. Fantasy and science fiction have ended up being my favourite tools for understanding our complex world and the strange people who inhabit it. Everything from Homer’s Odyssey to the latest space opera.

I have a daughter who is dyslexic. Getting her to read was a challenge. She loves books, has always done so, but we have had to use audio-books. Once she cracked the code, life became easier for her. But both of us still enjoy my reading to her, something I do not believe one becomes too old to enjoy.

My other son didn’t bother to read to himself until 4th grade – not properly. He has no learning disability, he just didn’t read. Then he went from reading poorly to finishing the first four books of Harry Potter in less than 3 months.

My Aspergian son also loves fantasy, mainly in the form of manga and anime.

All books are good. As long as you read them and enjoy them, they are good.

13 thoughts on “Who am I?”

  1. Greetings;

    You sent me a query on the cover art for A SOLDIER’S DUTY and AN OFFICER’S DUTY. However, the address provided kept locking up my email (and I have no idea why, grrr)…but hopefully contacting you this way will work.

    The cover art for both books is by Gene Mollica. The cover design for both is by Annette Fiore DeFex. And the interior text design for both is by Laura K. Corless.

    I know that the Art Department at The Berkley Group (parent company of Ace/Roc) arranged for the artist (Gene Mollica) to take many different shots of the model on the front cover so that they could consistently use the same model throughout all four books in the series. From what I have seen of the cover for book 3, HELLFIRE, it is the same model, so it’s probably going to continue to be the same artists for all three positions.

    …Personally, I love the cover art for these books. ❤ I can't wait to see what's on the cover of book 4, DAMNATION.

    I hope that helps you with your query. 🙂

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  2. I also have a form of dyslexia. I learned to read around it, but then when I decided to become a writer it reared its head again in strange ways. Sentence particles switched around, verbs in wrong places… all I can do is have a sense of humor about it. Wishing your son the best of luck!

    Thank you for your lovely review of THE SHADOW KILLER.

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  3. “As an adult I was told that people who were autistic could not like fantasy because they had no imagination. This was an expert stating this. It kind of made me wonder how well the professionals and researchers actually know the autistic community. Not very well, I imagine.”

    So much this. It actually makes me quite angry that we have “experts” stating this as if it has anything remotely to do with the experience of people on the spectrum. I suspect it’s because these so-called experts don’t have a good understanding of what counts as imagination, and what stories are for.

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  4. The “lack of imagination: stereotype is a big reason I discounted Aspergers as a possibility earlier in my life, because I have always had an extremely active & productive imagination – it was what I was most known for as a kid. (my suspicion was brief anyway. I wrote about it here). I also read tonnes of fiction books about my favourite topics: horses, dogs, cats, birds… (shared denominator: relations between kids/humans & animals:-) … plus to a lesser degree wild animals. I had read all books featuring that theme in my school library (all I could find at least) when I was about 10-11yo, and also books that only marginally featured an animal in it somewhere but were not directly about animals … Even though I often got disappointed with those books, I just had to always reside inside the world of a book / be undertaking the journey through a story. Outside books I felt lost.

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      1. Unfortunately I stopped reading books after my childhood. I’m reading quite many books again now, but I have not found my way back into fiction (with a few sporadic exceptions). As a kid I was completely immersed into book worlds, and they were as real and more important than the real world. I didn’t really draw a clear line between what is real and what isn’t, prioritising the real side.

        As an adult I have discovered what an amazing “story” the natural world is, plus I’m much more aware that fiction isn’t real, that it is all made up. That has shifted my preference over to popular science / natural sciences. I would like to read more fiction again, but I’m very picky about it now and quickly get the feeling that I’m being lied to if I find factual errors / what is supposedly taking place is improbable… Unlike when I was a child and totally trusted anything I read, never considering that a book is a product created by a person.

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      2. Ps. Do you have a second (first) book blog, since this post is called “another book blog?”

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  5. Another book blog? was more a question of why on earth I would throw myself on the blog world. But as it happens I have started a new one called http://zanegreyandme.wordpress.com/ The title is self-explanatory. It is definitely one where I have let my autism loose and have gotten to learn a whole lot of stuff about the old west and about the nature and people who lived there. There is lot of cool and scary stuff to discover on the net once I begin researching something.

    I kind of love that about both book blogs. Once I stopped trying to write “the right kind” of reviews and just went with who I am, I got to go on all sorts of journeys through history.

    I like so much stuff and only struggle with reading too fast. But there is plenty of stuff out there to read. Facts are so much fun.

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