Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet
Wednesdays are blue in Daniel Tammet’s world.
His book “Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant” is his stunning autobiography. That he has written such a precise and yet fascinating record of his existence to date opens a door on the world of this uncommon but growing condition.
Autistic people, especially those who also suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome have great difficulty socially and communication skills at Tammet’s level are uncommon.
Synesthesia Story of Daniel Tammet
The majority of his life has been spent in a withdrawn state punctuated by his fame as a savant.
His ability to sense the world of numbers and dates as shapes and colors, otherwise known as synesthesia, led to his record breaking recitation of the mathematical proportion “pi” to 22,514 decimal places that took five hours.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If2-ogm6734&w=570&h=461]
His upbringing in England is related in terms that only the autistic could conjure up. His characteristics of autism appeared as disconnection with his siblings (there were two autistic children in the family); the effect of environmental disruption on his thinking processes that could take minutes or hours to rectify; his father’s breakdown for which he could not empathize. The journey to adulthood is alien and, at the same time, gripping.
Tammet describes the revelation of being gay and his Christian beliefs, learning Icelandic language inside a week and his love of reading non-fiction books. Those with autism have problems with idioms. One of the signs of autism are that language must be clear and not inferred.
Helping Others With Autism
Unsurprisingly Daniel Tammet is now helping researchers to better understand the experiences of children with autism and the amazing talents of high-functioning savants. “Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant” is a landmark in this field and Daniel Tammet is to be congratulated on its publication.
To learn more visit Amazon > Born on a Blue Day, by Daniel Tammet
