Katherine Nabity's Blog, page 170

The Reason I Jump ~ Discussion Part 2

Info on The Reason I Jump

Info on the Nonfiction Book Club

My post for Part 1

Questions

What did you think of the short stories Naoki included?

I wasn’t particularly fond of them. They were…short stories written by a thirteen year-old. Also, by the last short story I was really thinking about the issue of translation. Translators make decisions. I’ve read different translations of Pushkin’s poems and been amazed at how different the same poem can be in English. I don’t doubt that Higashida is a smart, well-“spoken,” young man, but I think it’s important to remember that this is a translation.

I know some of us talked about this already, but I’m still curious – what did everyone think of his use of the word “we” to describe his feelings and experiences?

The “we” really bugged me, moreso in the second half when things got more spiritual/nature-oriented—things that seem perhaps more culturally-oriented than autism-oriented. (Also, is the “we” Higashida’s word or Mitchell and Yoshida’s word?)

When talking to my husband about this last night, he commented, “It’s like that story about the autistic kid with the dog. Now, suddenly, every autistic kid needs an animal in their life.”

What did you think of the book overall?

I.

While reading, I became concerned that The Reason I Jump had been written through some manner of facilitated communication, which can be very biased toward the facilitator’s wants. So, I poked around the internet and came upon a review by Temple Grandin. When asked to review the book, she had the same concern. Her reservations were allayed, and she wrote an interesting review comparing Higashida’s experience to her own and to other biographies.

II.

I found some of the questions kind of odd. For example: “What do you think about running races?” I feel like that question came after the answer.

III.

I think it’s important to see people with autism as people. Not people who became broken. Not people who need to be cured. It’s easy to be inclusive of diversity when diversity is easy to see. Being accepting of someone who thinks in a radically different way than most of us (and therefore behaves and communicates differently) is a difficult thing. I’d like to think that books like The Reason I Jump can provide some insight.

But then there was stuff like this:

“I think that people with autism are born outside the regime of civilization. Sure, this is just my own made-up theory, but I think that, as a result of all the killings in the world and the selfish planet-wrecking that humanity has committed, a deep sense of crisis exists. Autism has somehow arisen out of this. Although people with autism look like other people physically, we are in fact very different in many ways. We are more like travelers from the distant, distant past. And if, by our being here, we could help the people of the world remember what truly matters for the Earth, that would give us a quiet pleasure.”

And it’s too fanciful for my practical mind. Autism is not a new thing. It’s been around a long time, though we may not have called it autism. At best, this type of quote shows me that Higashida is a kid, that he doesn’t yet have context for his experiences. At worst, I half agree with Michael Fitzpatrick. He argues that The Reason I Jump is a very comforting fantasy for parents of autistic kids. Who wouldn’t want their child, whom they’re having a hard time understanding, to be more than just a person?

Magic Monday ~ April 25, 2016

I like Mondays. On Monday, I am refreshed from the weekend and exhilarated by the possibilities of the week ahead. I also like magic. I like its history, its intersection with technology, and its crafty use of human nature. I figured I’d combine the two and make a Monday feature that is truly me: a little bit of magic and a look at the week ahead.

Houdini and Doyle premiers next Monday in the US! It’s on Fox and will be available on Hulu as well.

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?

I cleared my plate during readathon, finishing up a couple things I had in-progress. There was nothing I felt like digging into for a review last week, but now (to mix my feasting metaphors) my cup runneth over. But what am I reading?

Central Station by Lavie Tidhar

ARC

A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is literally a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap, and data is cheaper.

I’ve read a couple of Tidhar’s Central Station stories in the past and really enjoyed the setting. I am a sucker for sense of place.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, hosted by Book Date!

What Am I Writing?

Not much. Classes are kicking my butt, Spring League finals are all day Saturday (I don’t even have all the info for setting up the page), and I need to set up Summer League (when I have that info). But, I’ve been doing some free writing (nearly) everyday as I work my way through Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones.

Deal Me In, Week 16 ~ “The Billiard Ball”

Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis

“The Billiard Ball” by Isaac Asimov

Card picked: King of Clubs

From: Asimov’s Mysteries

Thoughts:

Pool-playing scientist frenimies.

One is James Priss, a pale, slow-talking theoretical physicist, a two-time Nobel prize winner (both in science). The other is  Edward Bloom, a charismatic, college drop-out innovator, a multi-billionaire who has made his fortunes on the back of Priss’s theories. Their rivalry comes to a head as Bloom attempts to create an anti-gravity device based on Priss’s two-field theory. After a skirmish or words in the press, Bloom tricks Priss into demonstrating his new invention with a billiard table, ball, and cue. Unfortunately, a terrible accident occurs and Bloom ends up dead with a billiard ball-shaped hole through his chest. Freak tragedy? Or did Edward Bloom set himself up to be murdered?

There’s always a question in hard science fiction about how accurate the science is. Most general readers will assume the writer is knowledgeable enough to get it right. I don’t know enough about Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity to be too discerning, but Asimov knew his stuff (in his day) and it all *sounds* pretty good to me. It’s definitely my favorite of this anthology thus far.

 

Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon 2016

What is this? Exactly what it says on the tin! Except, relaxed. Read as much as you can or want. I’m shooting for 500 pages, which would break my personal record.

Reading List:

“The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A. S. Byatt – Starting on page 168/272
Gerald’s Game by Stephen King – Starting on page 126/445. FINISHED!
“The Billiard Ball” by Isaac Asimov – For Deal Me In
Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie
Lumberjanes, Vol. 1 by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke A. Allen (Illustrator), Maarta Laiho
Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed – Already one story in.

00:03

What I Read: “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” which was surprisingly funny.

Total Pages During Readathon: 480, close to my goal!

Notes: Gotta say, I’m dragging. I’m also questioning the possibility of staying up when I reeeally need to get some work done tomorrow. I’m going to read Lumberjanes, Vol. 1 and then see how I feel.

20:06

What I Read: A couple of short stories that I’d recently downloaded from Amazon:

“Adaptive” by Matthew P. Buscemi
“The Woman in Brown” by Tony Richards

Total Pages During Readathon: 376

Notes: Not a lot of reading done since dinner. Talked with Eric a while and then we went out for a much-needed walk.

Challenges: #WeirdCoverHunt

For weird, you can't go far wrong with sci-fi of a certain era. #WeirdCoverHunt #Readathon pic.twitter.com/DmvpD0iY5q

— Katherine Nabity (@Katen) April 24, 2016

17:22

What I Read: Just finished Gerald’s Game. Haven’t decided exactly what’s next. Might read a story I downloaded the other day.

Total Pages During Readathon: 352

Notes: My afternoon snack was a piece of chocolate bar and a Seagram’s Grape Fizz. Yes, while two of my other favorite alcoholic drinks are vodka and Guinness, I have a soft spot for fruit wine-/beer-coolers. Eric went out for Raising Cane’s. I kept aside a chicken finger and half my coleslaw for later.

Challenges: Mid-Event Survey

What are you reading right now? Between books! Probably “The Woman in Brown” by Tony Richards next and then “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.”
How many books have you read so far? I’ve only finished the one and only the last 320 pages. I’m a slow reader.
What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? I still have Lumberjanes in the queue.
Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Aside from necessary naps, not many interruptions.
What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? I am more awake than I thought I’d be.

13:01

What I Read: Still working on Gerald’s Game. I’m a slow reader.

Total Pages During Readathon: 198

Notes: Had another nap since last updates, and an egg sandwich for lunch. Also visited a few blogs. Happy Readathon, Everyone!

10:14

What I Read: Gerald’s Game

Total Pages During Readathon: 134

Notes: Remembered I had a tangelo in the fridge!

08:04

What I Read: Gerald’s Game

Total Pages During Readathon: 60

Notes: Went back to sleep for an hour or so. It was good. Had a second piece of pizza to calm my grumbling tummy.

Challenges: Road Trip Challenge

So, Sidney Chambers and I go on a Taco Road Trip…

Postcard: “The Vicar and I are having a fab time. Virgin margaritas all around!”

What’s on the tape deck:

06:01

What I Read: Despite all my in-progress books I started with Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death.

Total Pages During Readathon: 32

Notes: The moon is still up, but the roosters are crowing. Had a mug of coffee and a piece of leftover pizza.

04:09

Notes: As is usual for readathon day, I am awake early after getting very little sleep. The official start time isn’t for another 50 minutes. I hate the 5am start time. I guess if life gives you lemons, you might as well make Opening Meme lemonade.

Challenges: Opening Meme

What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Tempe, AZ. Thankfully, it’s going to be cooler today.
Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I am looking forward to that yet-unknown book that I will inevitably pick-up/check-out when nothing else seems good. (I’m already thinking I should grab an audio book from the library.) And Lumberjanes. I’m looking forward to Lumberjanes.
 Which snack are you most looking forward to? Sadly, I have no firm snacking plan. I always look forward to leftover pizza, though.
Tell us a little something about yourself! Currently, I’m on hiatus from writing to take some online classes and work on a nonfiction project involving an early 20th century magician. It’s my version of a mid-life crisis. ;)
If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? I’m not going to worry about making it the entire 24 hours. I’m so bad at sleep that I’m going to do it when I need to. (But I really would like to break my record of 485 pages.

Readathon Week!

Saturday, April 23, 2016 is Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon. (Sign up for the Readathon!) While I’m really terrible at sticking to lists, I love making them. Here is what I’m reading this week and into Readathon Saturday!

“The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A. S. Byatt – About 30 pages into this 177 page novelette.
Gerald’s Game by Stephen King – On page 94/445.
“The Billiard Ball” by Isaac Asimov – For Deal Me In
Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie

Might also read from:

Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed
Tempe Digital Libray’s comics collection. I’m eyeing Lumberjanes for late night Saturday.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, hosted by Book Date!

Deal Me In, Week 15 ~ “Marooned Off Vesta” & “Anniversary”

Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis

“Marooned Off Vesta” & “Anniversary” by Isaac Asimov

Card picked: Nine of Clubs

From: Asimov’s Mysteries

Thoughts:

This draw was a double story in the anthology. The first, “Marooned Off Vesta,” is a reprint of Asimov’s first published story, written in 1939 by a teenaged Isaac. It tells of three men trapped in a portion of their space ship, Silver Queen, after the majority is destroyed by an asteroid hit. The remains of the ship is in orbit around the asteroid Vesta. The men have three days of air left, as well as a week’s worth of rations, one space suit, a heat ray, a detonator, and, since the remainder of the ship includes the water storage, a year’s worth of water. If only they could jar themselves out of orbit and land on the inhabited Vesta…

“Anniversary” is a continuation of the story, written and set twenty years later. **Spoiler alert!** The three men survived but now face the middle-aged fear of their legacy being forgotten. “Anniversary” provides a little bit of mystery as the men try to discover why Trans-space Insurance is still looking for parts of Silver Queen wreckage.

The most amusing part of this second story is Multivac:

[Moore]…doubted if ever in his life he would meet any of the handful of technicians who spent most of their working days in a hidden spot in the bowels of Earth tending a mile-long super-computer that was the repository of all the facts known to man, that guided man’s economy, directed his scientific research, helped make his political decisions, and had millions of circuits left over to answer individual questions that did not violate the ethics of privacy.

Not quite Wikipedia and cloud storage…

The Reason I Jump ~ Discussion Part 1

Info on The Reason I Jump

Info on the Nonfiction Book Club

Initial Impressions

While I can understand that this might be a very comforting book to parents of an autistic child, I’ve had some reservations about The Reason I Jump. First, I don’t know about anyone else, but I knew nothing about myself at age 13. Anything I thought I knew, I was more or less wrong about. Has Naoki Higashida spent more time than the average kid in self-reflection? Maybe. Second, it’s acknowledged that autism a really wide thing, encompassing a lot of thought patterns and behaviors. It feels weird to me that “we” is used so much. The book isn’t called The Reason We Jump. It’s cool that this young man is giving us a look into his world, but I’m pretty sure his experiences aren’t universal for everyone on the autism spectrum.

On the other hand, there’s often a refreshing “Why? Because.” vibe that is sort of universal. I’d like to imagine that Higashida has as long of a list of things non-autistic people do that are as equally confounding. I mean, why do we like to hold hands anyway?

I’m glad that “normal” was acknowledged—that, for Higashida, autism is normal. The thought experiment in the intro wouldn’t work because all us neurotypical people would be too distracted by our losses to know what autism is like.

Interesting points about certainty—that the same comfy clothes, the same commercials, are touchstones of certainty.

Quote I wish were in the book’s “Popular Highlights” on Kindle:

I think it’s very difficult for you to properly get your heads around just how hard it is for us to express what we’re feeling.

Questions

Is the tone of the book what you expected, from someone with autism and/or from a thirteen year old boy? Tying into my earlier comment, Higashida seems very self-aware for 13 and maybe the encompassing “we” comes from that youth. The only other tone thing I found a jarring was some of the England-English slag: “told off”, “hacks me off”, etc.. These, I am assuming, are due to his translators.

Have you learned anything that has surprised you so far? I know quite a few adults on the spectrum and have considered autism a lot. It’s been interesting getting a different perspective on things, but nothing has surprised me.

Do you think that you would interact with someone who has autism differently after reading this book? Probably not, but I am a reserved person and, generally, I try to treat everyone evenly. When dealing with kids, I’m more likely to speak to them on an adult level anyway. That said, I have no idea how I’d deal with a raucous child that I couldn’t communicate with. I know I’m not the most patient person.

David Mitchell says that the problems of socialization and communication people with autism display “are not symptoms of autism but consequences.” What does he mean exactly…what is the difference as Mitchell sees it? Many of the difficulties are due to how people without autism deal with people with autism. Lack of patience. The assumption that “Oh, he just wants to be left alone” or “She doesn’t understand anyway”. Or  that everyone wants all the same things we do, which just isn’t the case.

Mini Reviews, Vol. 2 ~ The Woods (Real, Figurative, & Fantasy)

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson, read by Rob McQuay

I’d been meaning to finally read something by Bill Bryson and I was happy to find that my local library’s digital collection includes lots of his titles in ebook and audio formats. I’m not an outdoors person, which is exactly why I chose A Walk in the Woods.

Bryson does a wonderful job merging an entertaining narrative with lots of information about the Appalachian Trail, its statistics and history. I laughed out loud, a welcome diversion from some of the other reading materials I’m lately engaged in (not those below). I did find some of the environmental asides a bit heavy-handed, only because they seemed pushy in light of the rest of the tone. But this is definitely not the last book by Bill Bryson that I’ll be reading.



Now that I’m beyond the Triple Dog Dare, I’m back to reading online fiction. So far, there’ve been two great stories in April from Strange Horizons:

“This Is a Letter to My Son” by KJ Kabza – I always have an eye out for KJ’s fiction. Luckily, he’s on Twitter! What if we had a choice about how we intrinsically think about ourselves? Would we change? Should we change? Even if we seem to have a really good reason? This is a concise, beautiful near-future science fiction story about those questions.

“The Right Sort of Monsters” by Kelly Sandoval – Conversely, Kelly Sandoval was completely new to me (I think…). A fallen god (literally) and a grove of trees that provide a very special type of fruit for childless families. Of course, a sacrifice is required. (Art at left by Galen Dara.) Together, these two stories would make a great Mothers’ Day issue. And I’m counting “The Right Sort of Monsters” as my first official Once Upon a Time read.

Magic Monday ~ A Standard, Under the Sea

The cups and balls. Everyone knows of the cups and balls. It’s one of the oldest magic tricks. But that doesn’t mean that something new can’t be done with it.

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading?

I finished listening to Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods this past week. I’ll probably review it tomorrow. Might possibly get “caught up” this week if I finish these two:

The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror by Joyce Carol Oates

I’m halfway through this collection of six stories. Joyce Carol Oates continues to never give me what I expect…

 



The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida, K.A. Yoshida & David Mitchell (Translators)

Also halfway through The Reason I Jump. I need to sort through my thoughts before taking a look at the #NFBookClub discussion questions.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading, hosted by Book Date!

What Am I Writing?

I really need to get my butt in gear concerning the Open Court stuff. I goofed off way too much last week.

Deal Me In, Week 14 ~ “The Hungry Stones”

Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis

“The Hungry Stones” by Rabindranath Tagore

Card picked: Ace of Diamonds

From: Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown, ed. by Marvin Kaye

Thoughts: “The Hungry Stones” is a strong “classic” ghost story. We start with a narrator telling us of the time he was told a story while waiting for a train. I love framing devices… In this case, the storyteller is a collector of cotton duties and a bit of a know-it-all. The narrator, traveling back to Calcutta, somewhat snarkily notes: “As we had never stirred out of our homes before, the demeanor of the man struck us dumb with wonder.”

Our duty collector relates an experience he had in Barich. While working there, he was put up in an abandoned palace. He is warned by the locals that it’s a fine place to inhabit during the day, but that he should really find somewhere else to sleep at night. At first the duty collector’s nights are quiet since he arrives back at the palace after dark and immediately goes to sleep. But when he has a little idle time, he relaxes at twilight, enjoying his beautiful surroundings, and imagines he hears a group of ladies frolicking in a fountain. It’s such a lovely fantasy that he begins to rush home from work and spend his evenings wandering the palace and dreaming. It’s only the morning cries of the local madman yelling, “Stand back! Stand back! All is false! All is false!” that wakes him.

When the duty collector realizes that he’s in way too deep, the locals tell him that only the madman has resisted the palace. You see, it all began 250 years ago with a young Persian girl and a heart-rending tragedy, but unfortunately it is right about then when the late train arrives…

About the Author: If you look up polymath in the dictionary, you should probably find a picture Rabindranath Tagore. In addition to writing novels, short stories, and poetry, the Bengali-born Targore was a musician, actor, painter, and politician. He won a Nobel in literature and turned down a knighthood. Yet, I kind of wonder if he’s poking a little fun at himself with his know-it-all duty collector.