Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robinson

 Robinson who has written other books about autism has a difficult start in life. He grew up feeling different and not knowing why or how to label it. He was frequently told he needed to look people in the eye. Ostracized by kids, he turned to adults who were more forgiving of his lack of social graces. He learned to love machines (e.g. trains and amplifiers) and could visualize complex equations in his head.

In spite of a high intelligence, he could not adapt to school and dropped out at 16. He was a practical joker who learned to create elaborate devices that would fool the eye. He was also spending more and more time learning the ins and outs of the music industry. 

Eventually, he created a guitar that appeared to explode on stage, which the band KISS became famous for. Several chapters in Look Me in the Eye are devoted to adventures he had while working as a sound engineer for KISS. The band paid well but sporadically. Robison eventually explored a career in the corporate world. 

Despite not having an electrical engineering degree, Robinson found working at Milton Bradley an easy fit. He could designing electronic toys as well if not better than any of the engineers with degrees. 

As good as he was at design, though, he could not hack the corporate culture:

"I was thoroughly sick of all the criticism. I was sick of life.   Literally. I had come down with asthma, and attacks were sending me to the emergency room every few months. I hated to get up and face another day at work. I knew what I needed to do. I needed to stop forcing myself to fit into something I could never be a part of A big company. A group. A team."

Robinson thought the answer is to create his own business, repairing high-end cars like Land Rovers and Rolls-Royces. While that works for awhile, it isn't completely satisifying.

A friend who was also a therapist helps him making a discovery about himself that changes his outlook on life. The chapter, "A Diagnosis at Forty" focuses on his coming to terms with his diagnosis. 

Robinson not only comes to terms with his autism, he also makes peace with his parents who were at times indifferent and abusive while he was growing up.

This is an intimate portrait of one man's journey with autism and how it affected his professional life and personal life. He writes about his son, who also has autism, in a separate book, Raising Cubby. Robison also writes about his search for experimental therapies in Switched On. 

Robison is a scholar-in-residence at the College of William and Mary. 

Things You Would Know if You Lived Around Here by Nancy Wayson Dinan

This is a haunting novel about a girl, Boyd, that feels other people's pain. She feels other people's emotions so deeply that she ends up isolating herself and denying herself what most everyone needs--commitment and love.

Written in a domestic fabulist style, strange things happen in this novel. A woman who has been in a coma for a decade, awakens during the 2015 Memorial day floods in Central Texas. She puts on some clothes taken from a scarecrow and follows Boyd's path.

Boyd is trying to find her friend Issac whom she knows is in grave danger. After escaping a flooded car, he is dangling from a tree that is precariously perched over the flooded river.

In the midst of the storm, ordinary people, like soap-maker, Carla, become completely unglued. Classics professor Kevin is drawn to his ex-wife and the local, mostly stoned, retired high school teacher goes off on a fruitless treasure hunt. 

All of these odd events are juxtaposed with sections entitled "things you would know," and indeed those are things local people know about the Central Texas area. In these sections readers find stories about Maximilian's Gold and other stories unique to the area. 

What this novel ends with is possibility. Boyd changes in the course of the novel to the point where she is  able to let her gifts go; she no longer wants to be the conduit of of other people's pain. 

Reading a novel like this is like running a marathon but in a good way. Oddities and strangeness abound as people make strange decisions in a storm that are life-changing.

Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

In the delightful second novel in Cornelia Funke's Inkheart trilogy, Inkspell, Dustfinger, Meggie, Mo, Farid, and Resa find themselves transported into Fenoglio's Inkworld. 

Farid and Meggie enter Inkworld by choice while Mo and Resa are taken by force. Dustfinger has already taken up residence in Inkworld with the help of Orpheus.  

Inkworld, though, has irrevocably changed--mostly because of Fenoglio's bumbling attempts to fix plot problems. Amusingly, Fenoglio has lost control of his own story. 

The tyrant Adderhead fears death and a mysterious figure known as "the Bluejay." This legendary person, invented by Fenoglio, creates new problems for Mo and his family.

After reuniting with his fellow minstrels, Dustfinger battles with new villians--the Adderhead and his men. The fire-raisers, Basta and Mortola, have joined the Adderhead's retinue. 

Dustfinger, who always seems self-interested and self-absorbed, commits an entirely selfless act for his young follower, Farid.

The journey Dustfinger undertakes for his friend into the underworld promises to take all of the characters in new directions.