Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.47 AVERAGE
3.47 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
funny
informative
fast-paced
The author of this book has a combination of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), general anxiety disorder (GAD), attention deficient / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)...and I think other things.
Needless to say, she's never fit in well with the rest of society.
Pang is a scientist, though, and has written a book that is a combination of a memoir or description of her experiences with ASD, GAD, ADHD, OCD, and so on -- and various science topics. Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well.
Each chapter is organized around a description of Pang's particular challenges with some aspect of human life, and a description of some science topic that acts as a metaphor for understanding that aspect of human life. This is a nice idea, but it just doesn't work very well. The metaphors are poor, not very enlightening, and a bit trite, and the memoir aspects are too shallow, limited, and in-depth to be very illuminating.
For example, her chapter on proteins compares them to, say, a soccer team. The various players on a soccer team have different roles and do different things...just like the proteins in your body. People can be very different based on their past experiences that made them the way they are...and proteins can work differently based on how they fold. These light, surface-y metaphors are just not very enlightening, either for the science or the psychology.
In the end, I learned very little about science and didn't get any useful insight into Pang's experiences.
I came to this book because I share most of Pang's personality traits -- and strangely, they have become much stronger as I've gotten into middle age. So I'm interested in Asperger's and sensory processing disorder and so on. And I love science, so this book seemed like it would be for me.
However, in the end, this book would only be interesting to someone who knows nothing about either autism and related topics, and the science topics here. The premise is intriguing but it just doesn't result in a very interesting or insightful book.
Needless to say, she's never fit in well with the rest of society.
Pang is a scientist, though, and has written a book that is a combination of a memoir or description of her experiences with ASD, GAD, ADHD, OCD, and so on -- and various science topics. Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well.
Each chapter is organized around a description of Pang's particular challenges with some aspect of human life, and a description of some science topic that acts as a metaphor for understanding that aspect of human life. This is a nice idea, but it just doesn't work very well. The metaphors are poor, not very enlightening, and a bit trite, and the memoir aspects are too shallow, limited, and in-depth to be very illuminating.
For example, her chapter on proteins compares them to, say, a soccer team. The various players on a soccer team have different roles and do different things...just like the proteins in your body. People can be very different based on their past experiences that made them the way they are...and proteins can work differently based on how they fold. These light, surface-y metaphors are just not very enlightening, either for the science or the psychology.
In the end, I learned very little about science and didn't get any useful insight into Pang's experiences.
I came to this book because I share most of Pang's personality traits -- and strangely, they have become much stronger as I've gotten into middle age. So I'm interested in Asperger's and sensory processing disorder and so on. And I love science, so this book seemed like it would be for me.
However, in the end, this book would only be interesting to someone who knows nothing about either autism and related topics, and the science topics here. The premise is intriguing but it just doesn't result in a very interesting or insightful book.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism
Minor: Cancer
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced