Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone, I've been digging about for more information on autism since my diagnosis 2 years ago and have come up with a lot of books (141 at last count and growing by the month).
My question here is whether there is any place on this or another forum that reviews these?
For example some are aimed at the carers of profoundly autistic children and adults, some are aimed at the less profoundly autistic / aspbergers adults with almost a manual of how to live with the different traits and others are more academic and probably more of interest to therapists.
A few are just misinformed or badly written, some are like a workbook to help children develop to their full potential and others are more of a life story - a real mish mash of styles and contents.
I'm happy to try to build a review process and work through these but there is no point reinventing the wheel if this has already beed done.
So for part 1 - does this exist? If so, where?
Part 2 will happen if this does not exist and ask how would it be best to structure the reviews.
I have everything in DRM free PDF or EPUB files so may be able to pass these to anyone who wants to join in the review process. I'm not sure how this is perceived by the mods but please feel free to tell me if this is a no-go.
Hello. Below I have posted a link to a spreadsheet of autistic experience/neurodivergence related books:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N9A6SUxJPr2j03p5d48-Moxe9dKexfxdNgeOG007ayA/htmlview
As others have stated there are numerous other posts about book recommendation on autistic experience.
Thanks for the list. Some writers you haven't included are Katherine May, Robyn Steward, Fern Brady, Sarah Hendrickx, Charlotte Moore, Laura James, Sonny Jane Wise, Eva A. Mendes, Rudy Simone.
I'll try to put together my own version of the spreadsheet that Awesomely Autistic has linked to with the intention of using this as a starting point for our own library guide.
I will drop the fiction books for now, add the date published (as the older works are often lacking much recent research) and sideline the books on related topics for another time (eg ADHD, bipolar etc).
What sort of headline info do you want to see in this list?
I also would like to see what info you want any reviews to contain.
Bring on your suggestions please.
Re: info for reviews. I think self-help, memoir, lifestyle, psychology, mental health, research, neurodiversity, LGBTQIA+, ethnic minorities, graphic novel, picture book tags could be a starting point, then further tags for adult, teen, child, women and girls, parents just because different groups experiences of autism are influenced by age and gender and relationship but also a group you don't identify with may not interest you (e g. may not be interested in parenting books if not a parent). So for example, you could have the title and author of the book, then tags of Psychology/Mental Health or another book could have the tags Memoir/Self-Help/Women and Girls. I think it would also help if the book review mentioned if there were references to self-harm, suicide or abuse because obviously that can be majorly dependent on the reader's current state of mind as to whether it's appropriate for them.
I was a librarian and would define myself as still being a librarian. Librarians categorise as follows:
Adult
Young Adult
Children
Then within those categories this is how a library is structured:
Fiction: Fiction is categorised by the authors surname alphabetically. Confusion occurs when it comes to the Mc/Mac section of fiction. Macs come before if you follow the alphabetical rule. Macs come before Mcs. An example is Alexander McCall Smith. He is filed under McCall, then Smith then Alexander.
Non-fiction: Filed by subject defined by the Dewey decimal system. It's easy to find the Dewey decimal number for a particular book if you look up the ISBN of a book. International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique.
Dewy decimal numbers are grouped as follows:
000 – Computer science, information and general works
100 – Philosophy and psychology
200 – Religion
300 – Social sciences
400 – Language
500 – Pure science
600 – Technology
700 – Arts and recreation
800 – Literature
900 – History and geography
Children's picture books are generally in boxes that are easily accessible for pre-school children. Librarians don't categorise children's picture books. It's unreasonable to expect pre-school children to follow a system that they are unable to understand. Accessibility should be a priority for a good library.
Within that structure a library would highlight books that are relevant or underrepresented to a community through attractive displays and grouping books together that may otherwise be lost in the general shelving or swamped by books that are current bestsellers for whatever reason. Contrary to popular belief librarians are not book nerds but passionate about assisting people in finding the information they need or want. That doesn't mean that we know everything. It means that we know how to find information from a structure that is easily understood if you know the methodology. That's why it's known as information technology. That's just a brief description of my area of expertise.
Thanks, that’s a great idea! It will be a brilliant resource for anyone in our autistic community, particularly those at the beginning of their autistic discovery journey,
I would definitely recommend Neuroqueer Heresies, Drama Queen, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, Loud Hands, Untypical and many more that I can’t currently think of.
Here are some other reading lists of autistic experience books that might help you create your own version:
This list below is about 3 years old but still useful:
https://lizziehuxleyjones.com/#autbooks
The second link is a project to collate all autism books by autistic authors:
https://autismbooksbyautisticauthors.com/
More updated book recommendation list:
https://www.authenticallyemily.uk/resources
I hope this helps!