52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
37. Born on a blue day: inside the extraordinary mind of an autistic savant.
Memoir from a young man on the autistic spectrum (he’s diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome), a confirmed savant who experiences numbers and letters synesthesially (is that a word?). The author is fully aware of his social and emotional awareness deficiencies, and able to articulate this; however, his writing is jarring for its strange factual-ness, its “this happened, then that happened” literalness, and its weird lack of emotional nuance. All of this contributes to a unique voice. Plus, Temmet has memorized and recited Pi to 22,500 decimal places (it took him over 5 hours to say).
More interesting (for me) is that Temmet is an autistic gay Christian, converted after reading Chesterton, with whom he feels an affinity (he hypothesizes that Chesterton may have been a high-functioning autistic). The Incarnation, and the ritual aspects of worship, are both highly important to him. And he’s a testament to the expansive nature of God’s salvation — Temmet crosses all kinds of traditionally defined borders and still counts himself in the Kingdom. God values diversity.
