Blame My Brain – the review

I can safely say I have never felt the urge to crawl into a supermarket trolley. And doing so with vodka, would appear to make it more crowded, so I don’t really think I will bother. While on the subject of trolleys and supermarkets, I enjoyed visualising Mr M and his wife out hunter gathering in their local Sainsbury’s. (Wine and cheese hunted down by Mr M, and porridge oats successfully gathered by the wife, as she’s been programmed to do. Or so I imagine.)

Mr M’s wife, Nicola Morgan, has written a book about brains, as humorously as ever. It’s a bit of a trademark of hers; humour and wit. And lots of it. There is a new edition out of Blame My Brain, which contrary to what I’d imagined has actually been written for the teenagers themselves. Those with the brains in question.

It explains a lot, including why I was a perfect teenager (as elaborated on here by Nicola yesterday), and why I am also such a perfect parent. It’s not easy (actually, it is) but someone has to be.

BMB is very interesting, and should be extremely helpful to those in need. Teenagers with teenage brains, and their parents who have already forgotten what it was like to have one.

There is science to base almost every fact on, and the best thing is that even if you don’t fit the stereotype, it doesn’t matter. The world has a use for all sorts of people; the perfect ones, and those temporarily a little bit odd. (I believe that’s the one with the vodka in the trolley.)

I can’t decide who will benefit the most from reading BMB. The young person who needs reassurance that they are totally normal, or the unsympathetic oldies who don’t think they are. Both probably.

And seeing as you not only get better at something by doing it – repeatedly – but you can learn to do quite a bit of it by watching someone else do it, I’d say us oldies have a duty to perform, and to do it well. That way we will be looked after by someone in our even older age. Someone looking after us as well as we do our own oldies.

Or some such theory.

(At no time when chased by a lion have I felt so depressed that I have fallen asleep. Which could be why I’ve made it this far.)

The Great Big Book of Feelings

I almost approached this book out of a sense of duty. You know how some books appear to be so ‘worthy’?  I thought that The Great Big Book of Feelings might be one of those. It’s not.

Instead Mary Hoffman and Ros Asquith have come up with something really beautiful. Put simply, it’s a book that describes feelings, and as such I reckon would work quite well for aspie children (perhaps even older people) who need to learn what faces look like for different emotions.

But that’s not why I think it’s so great. It seems so full of life, somehow. (Except for the page about bereavement, which actually had me in tears within seconds. That’s how powerful the combination of Ros’s illustrations and Mary’s words is.)

Right, I will turn the page over and leave the ‘biggest rain cloud ever.’

It’s almost strange that you can get away with a book that just lists feelings, but it seems as if Mary has found every feeling you’d want, and Ros has drawn the loveliest pictures. I know that she always does, but still feel I must point it out.

(Have to admit that the Swedish proverb had me stumped. Perhaps I wasn’t paying attention that day.)

And I have never been scared of knees. Thought you’d want to know…

The Asperkid’s Secret Book of Social Rules

This book struck me as such a good idea when I first encountered its author Jennifer Cook O’Toole in a Guardian article about her own family. She is an aspie, married to another aspie, and with three aspie children. So, plenty of aspie experience to build a book on.

For the most part it lives up to that promise. It is primarily for younger people, and it has lists of pitfalls to keep in mind and learn coping strategies for. There are short chapters dealing with each individual problem area, with amusing illustrations to bring the message home, and making it easier to remember.

Most of the advice is very good, and coming from someone with personal experience it rings true. It will even work for people who are no longer children, setting aside any particular school age advice. Because it is aimed at children the book has some definite dos and don’ts. I feel they are a little too prescriptive, though.

I know aspies need rules, but if the suggestion is slightly ‘wrong’ or not appropriate for an individual (since even aspies are individuals) it could be taken at face value and steer someone in the wrong direction. There were one or two rules I disagree with, and someone else might find others they would feel were not quite right. And since Jennifer is an adult telling a child reader things, we are sort of back to square one again. (My other thought is that as Jennifer is an aspie, she could have got hold of the wrong end of the stick on occasion.)

This book is also very American. It makes the advice not useful for some aspects of normal life for the rest of us. And, Jennifer is writing for the most able aspies; the ‘close to being normal’ people. Advice on using makeup will not sit well with typical aspies. Social rules must not overrule someone’s comfort to the extent they can’t function. In Britain we don’t have the kind of sales staff who can be expected to advise on someone’s complete wardrobe.

And you mustn’t be poor, or have a non-typical family surrounding you, which will rule out many on the autistic spectrum.

But, it does have some great lists! I’d like to be able to pick my own favourites from those lists, to personalise a guidebook for someone. But short of rewriting it all, or cutting the book to pieces…

The book is best for urging young people to carefully consider who they trust, and who is a real friend. Not to think negative thoughts about yourself. Above all, to say no to anything and anyone if something feels wrong. Things don’t have to feel wrong. Better friendless than surrounded by the wrong people.

Thanks, Siobhan!

Easter brought back my earliest memories of Siobhan Dowd, and of The London Eye Mystery. It was as we left the local bookshop just before Easter 2007 that Daughter grabbed the proof of this wonderful book, and once she had read it, she gave me permission to read it as well.

I’d like to think that this ‘illustrious’ blogging career of mine would have gone in much the same direction even without Siobhan and The London Eye Mystery. Hard to say. It made me do my fan email thing, which in turn meant Siobhan wrote back to me, opening up a more personal view of herself; one which I might never have encountered otherwise.

Looking back, it seems so dreadfully unreal that she would die just a few months later. And who would have thought that her work would just go on and on afterwards? I won’t be alone in blessing her strength, writing four novels in such a very short time, giving us her fantastic books to read after she was gone. And her trust, which she had time to plan, helping young people to read.

This was the very beginning of my moving in literary circles, and I marvel at how I dared get on that train to Oxford for Siobhan’s memorial service in November. I met so many people there, who I would probably have met at some point, but not quite like that. Would I have known that Siobhan’s friend Fiona Dunbar would make the perfect Bookwitch Profile as seen here last month?

The London Eye Mystery made more magic later with the stage version. Again, lots of people met up, and for me a lasting pleasure was meeting her best friend Helen who came over from New York, and who provided the photo above. (You could ask why it’s important to meet the American friend of an author you never met. I don’t know. But it feels good.)

When I think back to first meeting literary people – online or in person – I can link back to Siobhan surprisingly often. It’s not just Declan Burke of Irish crime fame who popped up. He brought with him all those Irish crime writers that I’d never heard of before. Other bloggers. And in turn, these writers have taken me further in many different directions. I find paths doubling back on themselves.

Rings on the water, is what it seems like. Once this idea had come to me, the rings just grew and grew. I am not going to bore you with long lists of authors and publishers (although the lovely David Fickling must be mentioned). I started counting how many facebook friends originated with Siobhan, but gave up…

There was something in the way my brief contact with Siobhan encouraged more mad behaviour on my part. It wasn’t only meeting people. It was learning other things I could do. Was allowed to do. I owe Siobhan a lot, and I hope she’s sitting up there looking down at all of us, having a bit of fun herself. Maybe with a fluffy dog by her side, and a glass of something.

(I know. This is very much a me, me kind of post. But whenever I think ‘how did that come about then?’ my inner detective notices footprints going all the way back to this great author and person.)

Colin Fischer

Can there be too many aspie novels, and in particular, ‘aspie character solving a crime’ novels? Possibly, but as long as they are well written and entertaining I can certainly manage a few more. I did stop to consider this as I started on Colin Fischer the other day, thinking that I was on familiar ground, but I soon fell under the spell of Colin and his family. He has a mother who says ‘holy sh–!’

Although only twice. I think. She works for NASA, and Mr Fischer does something spacey-sciency as well. Hardly surprising they have ended up with a son like Colin. More surprising his younger brother is so ‘normal.’

Colin has just started high school, and he did so with his head flushed down the toilet. He keeps a notebook for just about everything. He seems to know just about everything, too, except how to socialise with people.

One day a gun goes off in the school cafeteria, and Colin sets to work on finding out who did it. He works almost harder at proving who didn’t do it. For this he has to leave his comfort zone. And he has to lie, which he needs help with.

You could see this as ‘simply’ another book set in an American school, with a socially awkward boy solving a mystery in an aspie kind of way. But I loved it!

Perhaps one day we can have an aspie hero who isn’t quite as capable as Colin. Most parents of children on the autistic spectrum have far more serious concerns than those faced by Mr and Mrs Fischer. But as contemporary entertainment, this has everything; mathematical rules about where to park your car, as well as advice on cooking for people who sell weapons.

I’d never heard of Ashley Edwards Miller and Zack Stentz before, but it seems they are the scriptwriters for X-Men and Thor. I can’t decide whether they intend to return to Colin Fischer, although I believe they left the door open.

Christmas in the Northwest

Melvin Burgess ate some of my bread. Again. But that’s OK. There was lots of it. Although I did admit that if this was my last week, I would spend it eating. Someone at our table said he would run. (Someone has their priorities wrong.)

Nine of us met up for some Armenian food in Manchester last night, and it was a modest start, but I think we’re on to something here. Us northerners can’t always be travelling to London, so will have to look for fun closer to home. Marnie Riches was tired of not having Christmas parties to go to, so got a few people together to remedy this. And then I tagged on, as their very own Rita Skeeter.

Someone did mention the words ‘top secret’ but I am afraid I wasn’t paying enough attention to be able to tell you any more. In fact, I was so concerned it would be boring, I had brought a book to read. It wasn’t, so I didn’t.

Almost didn’t find the place, as I had forgotten to factor in that Albert Square would be overflowing with continental gemütlichkeit this time of year. I almost overdid the ‘don’t get there too early’ by being second last to arrive, which jarred my Swedish sensitivities. As previously mentioned, Melvin Burgess was there and so was Lady Melvin. Jon Mayhew arrived after me, and my fellow Stopfordian Philip Caveney was just before me. I didn’t know Steve Hartley before, but he seemed really nice, apart from being unable to read a menu.

Enjoyed meeting someone I’ve previously seen on facebook, and also chatting to Lorrie Porter who was one of the panelists from the talk at MMU in the summer. I knew I recognised her, but it took some minutes to work out from where.

I learned that occasionally a manuscript will return from an editor with more typos than when it left. And we could all be a little autistic, but some are definitely more autistic than others.

At some point everyone got their cameras out, and it was actually quite hard to take any pictures that didn’t feature the person opposite you with a camera in front of their face.

This was more a private than a public gathering, so I won’t tell you who had a go with the toothpicks, or who could have got away with leaving without paying. Most of us had pudding, but only in the name of research. We were wanting to find out the difference between the two almost identical sounding desserts, which could only be done by ordering and sampling. Both were nice, but mine was the best.

It was a relief to be doing this sitting down. In London you nearly always stand the whole time. Admittedly, we didn’t see anything of the velvet trousers belonging to one famous author, the subject of which used up so much of people’s imagination on facebook earlier this week. But then, I’m not convinced they did either.

Dysfunctional Detectives

Back in August 2010 Caroline Lawrence blogged about aspie detectives we all know and love. I have asked her permission to use it on Bookwitch to mark the publication of her second P K Pinkerton novel. So here it is. (If you want to read the comments, or check out Caroline’s links, you can pop back to her Western Mysteries blog.)

‘According to the Pulitzer-prize winning screenwriter David Mamet,
“Asperger’s syndrome helped make the movies.” In his collection of
essays, Bambi vs Godzilla, Mamet talks about the type of autism called
Asperger’s.

According to Mamet, the symptoms of Aspergers include “early
precocity, a great ability to maintain masses of information, a lack
of ability to mix with groups in age-appropriate ways, ignorance of or
indifference to social norms, high intelligence and difficulty with
transitions, married to a preternatural ability to concentrate on the
minutiae of the task at hand.”

Someone once described Asperger’s as “mild autism with a startling
streak of genius.” In other words, many of those with Aspergers are
brilliant but socially dysfunctional. A slightly sexier version of
Rain Man.

Mamet goes on to say: “This sounds to me like a job description for a
movie director.” He also points out that Asperger’s syndrome “has its
highest prevalence among Ashkenazi Jews and their descendants”, who
make up the bulk of Hollywood movers-and-shakers.

Is Mamet joshing us when he claims that Hollywood is run by men with
Asperger’s? Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Sometimes Asperger’s is so subtle that it’s not diagnosed until middle
age. A well known case is that of Tim Page, a Pulitzer prize winning
music critic who only found out that he had mild version of the
syndrome when he was 45. He has written about it in his book Parallel
Play: Life as an Outsider and was recently interviewed on NPR. “I
didn’t suffer from classic autism but something was clearly wrong…”
says Page in one interview. “I couldn’t tell you the color of my
mother’s eyes or what a person was wearing last night at dinner, but
I’ll remember exactly what we talked about.”

If Hollywood is dominated by sexy Rain Men, it might explain why some
of our most popular fictional characters have certain characteristics
which might be called autistic.

Think of Star Trek’s Mr Spock and Data. Both characters are
popular among high-functioning autistic people. One of the most famous and articulate autistic authors, Temple Grandin, has confessed that
she is a fan of Lt Commander Data, the android who tries to understand
human behavior.

Then there’s the brilliant but anti-social Dexter. His dysfunctionality is due to a traumatic childhood, like Lisbet Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I don’t think Salander has Aspergers, but she does meet two of the criteria of someone suffering
from that disorder: “high intelligence” and “ignorance of or
indifference to social norms”.

Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory is the perfect example of a
character with “high intellience” but “indifference to social norms”.
Indifference being the operative word in Sheldon’s case.

Best of all are the many detectives who seem to have Asperger’s-like
qualities. The most famous of these, of course, goes back way before
Hollywood. Sherlock Holmes is a creation of the late 19th century, but is
just as popular today. He has several character traits of a person
with Asperger’s, though Steven Moffatt’s clever new Sherlock sometimes
lapses into ADHD behavior, dashing about with an almost Dr-Who-ish
energy.

Adrian Monk isn’t exactly autistic, but as a sufferer of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) he is a brilliant observer of detail and symmetry but a flop when it comes to interpersonal relationships.
There is great comic and tragic potential in a character like this. Do
all the best detectives have psychological or emotional weaknesses?

Not necessarily. Columbo is modelled on G.K.Chesterton’s apparently
ineffectual Father Brown. Whereas Holmes uses his brilliant deductive
faculties, Father Brown uses intuition. But like Columbo, his
fumbling, bumbling personality lulls criminals into a false sense of
security. They may seem to be socially dysfunctional, but they’re not.

A detective who is wildly socially dysfunctional and delightfully
wounded is the wonderful Dr Gregory House. Like Sherlock Holmes, he is a social misfit with only one true friend. It’s been pointed out before that the creators were partly inspired by
Conan-Doyle’s great detective.

Another modern-day Holmes wannabe is Christopher Boone, the teenage
narrator of Mark Haddon’s best-selling book, The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time. Christopher is a genius at remembering facts and doing mathematical calculations, but he is socially inept and takes every statement literally. Christopher’s favorite fictional character is Sherlock Holmes, (in fact, the “curious incident of the dog in the night-time” is a quote from a Sherlock Holmes mystery). Christopher is obsessed with the Victorian detective and employs Holmesian methodology when a neighborhood dog is murdered.

Of all the fictional characters mentioned so far, Christopher Boone is
certainly the highest on the scale. Like most people with Asperger’s,
he can’t decode facial expressions and needs guidelines to help him
figure out what people are feeling. Christopher has a flat, neutral,
toneless voice which comes across as wonderfully deadpan. “He doesn’t
get sentimental,” said Haddon in one interview. “He doesn’t explain
things too much… It’s the voice of person who doesn’t feel there is
a reader out there. So when you’re writing in this voice, you never
try and persuade the reader to feel this or that about something.”

I’ve been thinking about detectives with Asperger’s because the hero
of my new series, The Western Mysteries, is P.K. Pinkerton, Private
Eye, a 12-year-old detective who is half Sioux and half White, and definitely somewhere on the Asperger’s spectrum. Of course, in the 1860′s the syndrome had not yet been diagnosed and had no name. P.K.’s ’Thorn’ is not being able to determine what people are feeling.

My Gift is that I am real smart about certain things. I can read &
write and do any sum in my head. I can speak American & Lakota and
also some Chinese & Spanish. I can shoot a gun & I can ride a pony
with or without a saddle. I can track & shoot & skin any game and then
cook it over a self-sparked fire. I know how to cure a headache with a
handful of weeds. I can hear a baby quail in the sage-brush or a mouse
in the pantry. I can tell what a horse has been eating just by the
smell of his manure. I can see every leaf on a cottonwood tree. But
here is my Problem: I cannot tell if a person’s smile is genuine or
false. I can only spot three emotions: happiness, fear & anger. And
sometimes I even mix those up.

When we’re feeling lonely or obsessive or have made a particularly big
social gaffe, many of us probably wonder if it’s because we are
somewhere on the Asperger’s scale. I think that’s why these
dysfunctional characters are so popular, they are like us, only more
extreme. I myself often find people completely unreadable. What I
wouldn’t give to be able to glance at a person and – like Sherlock
Holmes – know instantly who they are and what they are feeling! That’s
one reason I created P.K. Pinkerton.

[The Case of the Deadly Desperados features stagecoach action in the
very first chapters. This Western Mystery for kids aged 9 - 90 is
available in hardback, Kindle and audio download. It will be published
by Putnam's in the USA in February 2012.]‘

And as the Resident IT Consultant correctly pointed out Caroline has not mentioned Saga Norén. Nor, to my mind, Sarah Lund. But then they weren’t around two years ago, so that’s all right. I’m just quite pleased that to be a detective, it’s no bad thing to be aspie-ish.

The Case of the Good-Looking Corpse

I reckon Caroline Lawrence’s second Western Mystery may well be better even than her first P K Pinkerton case. I enjoyed myself tremendously from the start. It could simply be that I like returning to something I know, but it could also be that now Caroline has warmed up, there will be no stopping her murderous path through Virginia City.

The Case of the Good-Looking Corpse begins mere hours after the first case for Pinky ended, leaving at least the reader out of breath, and I suspect poor P K as well. Because getting out of that first very tight corner, has not prevented him/her from getting into another equally tight place. And as before, our private eye is writing down everything that has happened, in order to convince the law that the detective isn’t the bad guy.

Someone else is. And it turns out P K’s new hobby will help narrow down the suspects. And this time Pinky has friends to help, although Sam Clemens (aka the future Mark Twain) isn’t always as helpful as you’d want him to be. There is also the constant danger of Pinky getting kissed.

A former Soiled Dove has been murdered and her servant girl wants the killer found before he finds her as well. She gives Pinky a description of the murderer, but Virginia City appears to be full of men looking just like that. It takes all P K’s skills at reading people’s behaviour (mainly their feet) to work out who did it.

P K’s Thorn (Asperger Syndrome) keeps getting in the way, but as with many great detectives it will ultimately be of help to him/her. (I know I keep writing him/her. I feel we are getting much closer to knowing whether or not P K is a boy or a girl.)

I love the Western feel to these stories! And I love the fact that 45 years after I saw myself as a Western character, I now have a child character in the Wild West to read about. (I always fancied being an Indian, too.)

Besides, who wouldn’t want to live on their own and decide where and when to eat breakfast, even when you’re just twelve? Especially when you are twelve, I meant.

How wartime Bletchley Park made Ruth fall head-over-heels in love with maths

I’m the last in line. There has been this blog tour for over a week, in aid of maths and codes and generally saving the world. I’m saying as little as I can, because I get worried when I see so many noughts. Gazillions of them. So here is a smitten Ruth Eastham telling us why she’s crazy about them.

“Four down, 158,000,000,000,000,000,996 to go.

That’s million, million, million to you and me. Quintillion for short.

No, I’m not talking about the number of drafts I had to do for my second book, The Messenger Bird (although it did seem like that at times). Writing may be hard graft, but what about having to crack vital, top secret enemy messages day after day without a let-up?

I’m talking BP, and not the service station and convenient-roadside-shopping kind. I’m talking Bletchley Park. The extraordinary Second World War code-breaking headquarters.

Now, I’ll admit, I’ve always been a bit of a geek. I play chess; I used to make up cryptic crossword clues just for fun; I was already partial to a bit of mathematics…

Maths may not be the nation’s favourite subject, and some of you may even need convincing just how wonderful it is. You may even scoff at the very idea of my being in love with it. But you simply need to be enlightened, as illustrated by a conversation recently with a former student of mine:

Inge: I hate maths!

Ruth: Why?

Inge: It’s BORING!

Ruth: But it’s maths that made Bletchley Park tick! If it wasn’t for maths, the Turing Bombe (first operational in September 1940) would never have been designed, enemy Enigma messages would never have been decoded, and the theories of programmable numbers would never have led, in December 1943, to the invention of… Inge… Inge?

So just how did Bletchley Park do it?

You’ve heard of Enigma Code, right?

An Enigma machine was a sort of typewriter, but with two keyboards. It was used by the Nazis to send messages. When a key is pressed on the lower keyboard, special rotors inside and a plugboard make a different letter light up on the upper keyboard.

The scrambled string of letters was sent by radio waves in Morse, and ‘Listening Stations’ located around Britain and abroad intercepted these secret messages and sent them straight to BP!

Problem was, with Enigma machines there were millions upon millions of different ways they could be set to when the message was sent! Quintillions in fact! Another problem was that the settings were changed at midnight every single day…

Enter BP and the ‘Turing Bombe’, which was an automatic machine that could quickly test-out all the different possible settings. Once the correct one was found, all the messages intercepted that day could be decoded, letting the Allies make crucial decisions about the movement of soldiers, ships and war planes; likely shortening the War by two years!

Yes, two whole years!

Hitler and his generals used a machine with, not three, but twelve rotors, leading to the invention of Colossus, the great-granddaddy of all computers!

So maths is not only beautiful, it was the basis for all computing as we know it. You like your laptop, don’t you? You like being able to freely surf and chat to friends? You’ve got maths to thank for that!

So need I say more about why we should all adore mathematics?

(I’ve still to convince Inge, but I’m hoping she’ll come round…)”

Never mind Inge; I have come round. Or would have, if I thought I could do it. But I believe. And I’m a great fan of Alan Turing’s.

And for those of you collecting letters for Ruth’s mystery message competition: Mystery letter number 9=I

Vampire Dawn

I know you felt safe from vampires over here, but there is no such thing as safe. And this new vampire series by Anne Rooney is no safe, pale, veggie kind of vampire series. Anne might count herself veggie, but it’s been a long time since I encountered so much blood in books. I’d recommend not reading and eating at the same time.

Intelligently written, with humour – and blood – and exciting and dangerous, this is a series of easy to read books for older readers. Seven books in total. You have to start with Die Now or Live Forever. It’s where the five teenagers Finn, Juliette, Omar, Ruby and Alistair go camping in the woods in Hungary. Almost before they can say ‘bat’ they have turned into vampires, much to everyone’s surprise.

The next five books are one for each teenager, and can be read in any order, as they don’t have much to do with the others after ‘the change.’ You find out what their lives are like afterwards. Not that they have much of a life, some of them.

There is blood. Did I say? And the books are quite scary in places. I think I found Drop Dead Gorgeous the hardest to digest. There is an aspie vampire, naturally. And all the teenagers encounter some famous people that we have erroneously believed to be long dead. Undead is what they are.

Once you have covered In Cold Blood, Every Drop of your Blood, Life Sucks and Dead on Arrival, you can study the very useful Bloodsucking for Beginners.

Anne has evidently done a lot of research. I know she is brainy and all that, but I hadn’t realised it was possible to research vampirism.

And all that blood…