The A to Z of ASDs: Aunt Aspie's Guide to Life

This is okay. I liked some of it, but other parts feel like they were added in for girth.

What we have here is an alphabetical listing of advice/guide for those who are “on the spectrum:” Autism, ADHD, Aspberger's Syndrome, etc. In my opinion this isn't specifically for that though. Some of this is good advice for people in general. I do want to add that I think there are a lot more people in our society that are on the spectrum than we are aware of. They just don't get help for their tendencies. I wish some of this advice were maybe backed up by stories from people living on the spectrum.

Some of this was amusing, but felt like general ranting (which I am not saying is a bad thing):

Arranging things (see OCD) I recently saw a TV show where a forensic psychologist implied that a man was a psychopathic killer by asking him if he arranged his socks by color in a drawer. Aunt Aspie was was shocked and appalled! If arranging things were aa system of mental dysfunction, imagine hoe difficult buying groceries would be... “Excuse me, can you tell me where your pasta is?” “I don't know lady,your guess is as good as mine... somewhere.” Neatness and tidiness means there is one less thing to confuse us in our day.

Some of us take it to an extreme level. Those people make good overseers, organizers, engineers, teachers...

The entire time I was reading this I kept picturing Tyler Perry's Madea reading this book to me. To be honest, it was quite entertaining to imagine.

My main problem was the formatting of my ecopy. The ABC's were not bold, at times I found it almost difficult to decipher between one topic to the next. I reslly had to pay attention when a simple use of bold would have sufficed.

For each letter there is more than one topic, often times there are quite a few. Examples: Gender Issues, Sex, Relationships, Self-Pity...

Recommendation:

There is quite a bit of good information here. I think this would be of great help to a family member wanting some understanding without feeling overwhelmed, or someone just needing something funny to lighten a recent diagnosis.

Review copy via Edelweiss.