Memoir About Life With Asperger's

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robinson

Interesting fact #1:  John Elder Robinson is Augusten Borroughs's older brother.  We've read about him in nearly all of AB's works, and now we finally have a chance to get his point of view. 

I picked up this book looking for more information about Asperger's Syndrome from a first-hand account, not for a laugh, but in Look Me in the Eye I found both.  A story about growing up with Asperger's during a time when no one knew what it was and so assumed those affected were lazy or even psychopathic would have been interesting on its own.  Likewise, we've seen in Borrough's works that their almost-too-bizarre-to-be-real family makes for some disturbing yet enthralling reading.  Combine the two experiences and you've got a childhood few of us could have survived and the grounds for a fascinating memoir.

Interesting fact #2:  Robinson's adult life is just as strange as his childhood.

He dropped out of high school at just sixteen years of age having made an almost perfect score on the GED, spent his newly found free time alternating between living in the woods and helping his like-minded friends with experiments that often ended with explosions and giant fires, and got his big break when he impressed Pink Floyd's sound crew with his knowledge of audio electronics.  This led to a brief career modifying guitars to do things like smoke, glow, shoot sparks, and explode for Ace Frehley, Kiss's lead guitarist.  He also worked as an engineer in a toy factory, tried his hand at climbing the corporate ladder, and ended up owning his own business.

The most important fact you need to know before reading the book:

Robinson's is a great success story.  For much of his life, what he wanted more than anything was to have real friends and to understand what people expect of him during conversations and other interactions.  He dedicated himself to studying proper social responses in different situations and has had successful careers, has been married, and is a father.  Robinson has also made great strides in understanding his feelings, which is what enabled him to write this book.  As an adult, he is able to look back on his earlier years and write about what he was feeling even though he didn't understand it at the time.  This reflection along with the humor Robinson's life story brings makes this work a powerful memoir.

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What Next?

Having just finished grad school coming straight out of college coming straight out of high school, this year has been the first in my life that hasn’t been filled with assigned reading.  I started out excited because I had always complained that I never got to read what I wanted to, but now I miss being handed really great literature without having to do any research to find it for myself.  Sure, I always had my summers to read whatever I wanted, but I mostly spent my time catching up on the classics I thought I needed to read that we had missed in school.  But after discovering the hilarity of Dave Eggers, David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Chuck Klosterman, and the list goes on, I realized I what had been missing out on: reading for pure enjoyment, no higher purposes.  They took me back to the days I first fell in love with Harry Potter back in middle school.  (Yes, I’m showing my age here.)  I’ve missed that thrill of reading, and have been working on getting it back.

Still keeping up my teacher preparations in my off-year, I try to alternate one adult book just for fun with a young adult book or two to add to my repertoire.  Young adult books are easy to find; I’ve bought enough of them over the years to fill my future classroom library that Amazon does a pretty great job recommending good ones to me.  But I don’t buy as many of my adult books because I don’t have a reason to keep them, so Amazon can’t do me as much good there.  To help me in my search for good books, I started looking for a website with rating and recommendation features similar to Netflix.  Netflix makes it so easy to find movies and TV shows I’ll love, and I thought we book lovers deserve the same service.  While I haven’t found anything quite as easy and detailed as Netflix for books, I have come across a few helpful sites.

Literature Map

Literature Map is an easy-to-use web of authors.  When you enter one of your favorite authors, a cloud of other authors appears around your author.  The closer two authors’ names are together, the more likely a reader will like both.  Within webs, you can click on different authors to quickly view their webs as well.  The Map is always evolving to add new authors and uses information site visitors enter to populate the web, so there are some mistakes.  For example, Stephenie Meyer appears in some webs several times with her name spelled different ways, and I shouldn’t be judgmental because I just had to correct the way I spelled her name.  I found that the webs did a good job of grouping many of my favorite authors together, so the site seems to be fairly accurate.  Although you cannot use the Literature Map to see any of the books the authors have written or view any biographical information, the Map is a good starting point when looking for new authors to explore.




Literature Map for Franz Kafka

 

What Should I Read Next?

This is a really straightforward site in which you enter a book you like, and it gives you a long list of books that are similar.  This site is also run by reader input, so I can’t be sure how close the recommendations are to what you enter, but I will probably try a couple of them.  Big picture: It’s free, it’s easy, and it gives you actual book titles instead of just author names.  There is an option to register, which may give you more information and control over your recommendations, but I’ve been too afraid of being bombarded by emails to try.  Let me know if you’re braver than I am.



Sample list of recommendations.

 

Goodreads

This is by far the most elaborate and accurate site of the three, and I have been a registered member for several months.  Members can rate books they’ve read, create bookshelves to organize those books by categories you choose, enter books you are reading and plan on reading, and of course receive recommendations for new books to read.  One drawback is that the site does not automatically recommend books based on your ratings like Netflix does: you can explore books to read by browsing bookshelves of members who like some of the same books you do and looking through the many helpful lists of books, or you can ask a Goodreads friend (you know, like Facebook friends) to recommend something for you.  On Goodreads you can also participate in discussion groups and book clubs and recommend books to your friends.  So far, I love it!


Some featured book lists. 
(I'm particularly attracted to the best strange and twisted memoirs.)

 Hope you find these helpful!  I think young adult readers would find these helpful, too.  Let me know if you know of any other or better book recommendation sites.