Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir (Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant)
Posted by nliakos on March 19, 2008
by Daniel Tammet (2006; Landmark Audiobooks 2007, narrated by Simon Vance)
This book is one of the most interesting books I’ve read recently. Daniel Tammet is a young British man with autism and savant syndrome; he is extraordinarily gifted in the areas of mathematics and languages. Unlike many (or most?) people with savant syndrome, he is verbally articulate and is able to describe, for example, how he “sees” numbers as mental landscapes having shape, color, and size; how he goes about learning (or creating) a new language (he learned enough Icelandic in a week to go on national television and be interviewed in the language!); and his experiences as a volunteer English teacher in Lithuania–his first time living away from home! What a gutsy guy. He’s a real inspiration.
Here is one of several videos on YouTube about Daniel Tammet:
