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.