I'm in two minds about this book.

The book is a mix of the author's own experiences and trying to explain more generally about autism.

I enjoyed hearing her own experiences. She brings a unique point of view to the table, and hearing about how she approaches and thinks about her work is interesting.

However, the information on autism suffers from the age of the book - originally written 26 years ago, and revised 15 years ago.

While she does say that autism differs in different individuals, there are plenty of sections where (what I feel is) over-generalizations are made, as if they apply to all autistic individuals.

It (briefly) talks about how vaccines may be a cause of autism, an idea that has caused much harm to autistic individuals over the years, and has been utterly debunked for quite a while.

The benefits of ABA are also talked about, a type of "therapy" based around training autistics to suppress their natural behavior to fit in better, rather than finding out the reasons for the behavior to help find reasonable accommodations for their needs. It is not hard to find extensive discussions of people being traumatized by this if you go looking. https://reddit.com/r/autism/comments/pe8ohn/opinion_on_aba_therapy/ is a good starting point if you want to learn more.

While the book does contain some good information, it is littered with much information I would put caveats on with our current understanding of autism. I'm sure it was quite informative at the time it was written - our understanding has just shifted since then. ( )

3.5 stars

Temple Grandin is autistic, and grew up to earn a PhD in animal science. This book is an autobiography combined with information on autism, with plenty of animal anecdotes thrown in, as well.

This was good. No question my interests are more in line with the animal portions of the book, but the autistic information was interesting, as well. I was particularly interested in Temple's own childhood and how she thinks in pictures (hence the title) – some autistics do that, but not all. She included plenty of psychological and scientific information on autism, in addition to the anecdotes from her own life (and the lives of other autistics she knows or has heard from), as well as advice for parents of children with autism. ( )

I was very interested in it at first, but as it went on, I actually got bored. It seemed repetitious. I think as the book went on my impression of it became colored by the fact that I find autistic people very, very hard to deal with. Temple Grandin reminded me strongly of someone I knew in school and had to partner with in a cooking class. While it was fascinating to see how she’s found a way of life that works for her, everything about her was annoying me and I couldn’t help thinking how irritating she’d be if I met her. ( )

50% done with book, but could not finish.. too much detail for an outsider like me. Grandin is truly a scholar, so if you want to know something about autism, this is a pretty definitive read. ( )

I think this could be used as a wonderful reference. This also increased my understanding of autism as Ive only known a couple of people with it.
( )