Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant: A Memoir

Daniel is a very high-functioning autistic person with savant syndrome- he has an extraordinary ability to recall and compute large numbers- due in large part to his unique way of visualizing them as distinct shapes and colors. He has synesthesia with both numbers and words. And he suffered from epilepsy as a child. This memoir describes how he grew up, isolated in many ways yet enjoying his own sensations and obsessions (especially collecting things) and only when he was older having a desire to interact with peers learning to navigate social interactions and tasks like shopping or finding his way on bus routes. He describes difficulties in school, living in a large family (nine siblings!) and how he calms himself in stressful show more situations. How he volunteered to work overseas teaching English as a second language, how his aptitude for learning languages works, how he once memorized and recited 22,000 digits of the number pi to break a world record! (It took five hours to make the recitation). And finally, how he discovered that he's gay, fell in love, and moved in with his partner, living independently and successfully started a business creating a website to help people learn foreign languages. It's astounding. Most of all to me, the very different way in which he visualizes and understands the world. Last year I watched a documentary made about him and I was just blown away. Even the mental games he tells of playing as a child, with numbers, I can't really comprehend. Although the writing style is a bit dry, he recalls incidents with a lot of detail- even from a young age. Some of them sad, to see how peers at first shunned him, and teachers misunderstood. His story of overcoming challenges living with autism and finding his way in the world, to living independently with someone he loves and even finding religion, is very inspiring.

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Here's a fascinating insight into a baffling mind! To be autistic is rare enough. To have synaesthesia is rare too. To have savant syndrome is even rarer. Well, Daniel Tammet combines all three! More, unlike most individuals with savant syndrome -who usually are so challenged in other cognitive areas that they are dependent for their care- he is perfectly independent; and so fully able to tell about his experience. 'Born on a Blue Day' truly is an extraordinary book.

Starting by reminiscing upon his childhood, it's touching and moving to see him growing up surrounded by people who have absolutely no clue. Asperger wasn't recognised as a unique disorder before 1994, and so here we are, watching upon this little boy making his way through show more a childhood unlike any others. As with every autobiography, this is a unique personal history for sure. Yet, it echoes with the experiences of many; and when it comes to people like me (so-called 'neurotypicals') he blows away some prejudices still well ingrained among the general population. Autistic people are not loners by choice, they crave friendships and relationships as everyone does; it's their perceived weirdness which doesn't help, and so they often end up lonely by default. Autistic people are not 'retard', they hate being patronised as much as everyone else. Autistic people are also perfectly able to contribute greatly to society (he went on volunteering in Lithuania in his early twenties; and he works - unlike many others on the spectrum, sadly still left behind on the job market...). He was lucky though, in that his family was very loving, nurturing, supportive. As he acknowledges himself, his (numerous!) siblings have done wonders for improving his social skills; like, later on, his long term boyfriend will do wonders to help him connecting with his emotions.

No matter how moving and interesting, though, his family and love story is not what glued me to this read. His mind did.

Following epileptic seizures in childhood (nasty ones, we're talking here about status epilepticus...) his brain was completely reprogramed (for default of a better word) into acquiring amazing skills. Not only does he have synaesthesia, but, he developed a gift for numbers and languages. A visual mind is not unusual for autistic people. The thing with him is that he sees numbers in shapes, colours, textures, and motions! Same with words: he pictures them each with an associated colour. Beyond that, his ability to thus visualise words and numbers as he does allows him to arrange and re-arrange them mentally, merging them altogether, in such a way that he can perform unimaginable calculations. Added to an extraordinary memory for everything related to numeracy (eg dates...) here's a fascinating mind to delve into! Fluent in ten languages, he learnt Icelandic in about a week! He also holds the record for reciting the mathematical constant pi from memory to 22,514 decimal places (a feat that took him more than five hours to perform!).

Not every autistic individual is the same, and, savant syndrome is extremely rare. His autobiography is therefore unique for many reasons. However, despite his 'differentness' (as he calls it) Daniel Tammet's memoir is both touching and compelling. Touching, because being yet another voice from Asperger's his experience has to be discovered for anyone curious about how possible it is to differently perceive the world around. Compelling, because such insight into synaesthesia and savant syndrome make for a engrossing read for whoever is intrigued by how weird the human brain can be. In the end, you cannot but feel admirative in front of a such a person. Remarkable! show less

As the subtitle says this book is about a high-functioning person on the autism disorder spectrum. But what the title doesn't explicitly say is that the autistic person wrote the book himself. As such it is a fascinating look into how a person with autism thinks and feels.

Daniel Tammet is British, born to working-class people as the eldest of nine children. He early on demonstrated his autistic tendencies, preferring to spend time alone in his room over playing with his siblings or other children. He also displayed an early fascination with numbers. He has synaesthesia which means that numbers and words have unique shapes, colours and textures when he thinks of them. This perhaps explains his incredible memory for numbers. He holds the show more world record for reciting the digits of pi, a total of 22,514 digits in 5 hours and 9 minutes. He is also incredibly adept at learning languages. He knows 10 languages and once learned Icelandic in a week. At the same time he has all the emotional difficulties of a person with autism and he frankly talks about them.

Truly fascinating. show less

Autistics are often characterized as unempathic, but this is asking that they empathize with us when we equally fail to empathize with them. In this book, Daniel Tammet tries to bridge the gap by telling who he thinks WE are, who he thinks HE is. But he was taught to value who we are, to see himself as having deficits, and he accepts that verdict while simultaneously bragging about his "extraordinary mind." I was hoping that the chapter in which he meets "Rainman" would offer us a "marriage of true minds" connection, but alas, it does not.

In the end, I was left feeling that the autistic love of facts is a way of protecting the oversensitive, and that, as a result, I never got to know him in the way I would have liked. Maybe his show more boyfriend Neil must be the one to write such a book. show less

Daniel Tammet doesn't exhibit the greatest literary style in his Born on a Blue Day. It reads as a series of anecdotes strung together; however, that doesn't matter. His book is one of the finest insights into what it feels like to be a high-functioning autistic.

Tammet additionally has synesthesia, which means he "sees" numbers and letters in colors and shapes. Not all autistics have that: My two daughters do not. Nor are all those with synesthesia autistic. But Tammet credits the synesthesia with enabling his ability to do remarkable arithmetic calculations. (Tammet is one of 50 savants in the world.)

The book is a must-read for any parent of an autistic child. I took such solace from it. My eldest daughter (a high-functioning autistic) show more goes off to Earlham College in August, and I am more nervous than most parents. But reading Tammet's book truly gave me hope.

While There's a Boy in Here: Emerging from the Bonds of Autism, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, and Nobody Nowhere: the Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic are all excellent first-hand accounts of being autistic, Born on a Blue Day is, by far, the best of the lot. show less

Daniel Tammet has synaesthesia, savant syndrome and Asperger's. He has written a book about his life that is honest and provides great insight into the thoughts and feelings of people living with these conditions.

I found the book fascinating. Daniel sees numbers as unique shapes and colours and he explains how this helps him to calculate and to remember sequences, such as the digits of pi. He also explained his feelings and how he interacts with people.

It is a very honest book, written in the hope of helping others understand the conditions Daniel lives with. It is easy to read and engagingly written.

An interesting and engaging story of a man with Aspergers, his life experience and what he is doing with his life. I found it both interesting and a touch exasperating and can imagine that he is a hard person to life with or work with. The focus is continusously on him and you can see how others could be sidelined by him.

He describes how school was torture for him because he really didn't fit in, being gay didn't help either, and where he didn't understand the social niceties of the world.

It does lag occasionally, particularly when he gets bogged down in mathematical abstracts but otherwise it is quite interesting and gave me an insight to how some people think.