Aspie Women and Reading

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I also love to read, have always loved to read.

When my children were little, it did not matter what was going on, what my mood, I could always sit down and read them a story. It got us through many tough times. I love children's books.

Now I use reading as an escape. No matter how busy, I always allow time for an hour or more of reading after work or after dinner. The thing I look for in fiction is character development. I guess I like to read about what I don't understand and do not have in my family. Things I cannot stand are fantasy, romance, science fiction. I like a book to be firmly rooted in the real world. I have a hard enough time understanding what is real without venturing into the imagination too far.

I go through nonfiction periods. Like others, I have read everything about Asperger's and autism, usually in the form of biographies/autobiographies. My favorite all-time nonfiction was "Dibs, In Search of Self". I am particularly captivated by elective mutism, strangely enough. I wished I had thought to stop speaking as a child to draw some attention to the fact that I WAS NOT ALL RIGHT!

OMG, this is like stumbling into a different world! Until I read this thread, I never knew there were other people who loved reading as much as I do. (It was a shock when I met my late fiance and found out he had the same reading habits as me.)

I learned to read early, as many others have said - got a library card at age 4, and had to prove to the librarian that I could read before she would issue one to me. I read everything and I read all the time. I still do, with the exception that I can no longer read horror stories. They "stick" in my head too much and keep me awake at night.

Sci-Fi was one of my early loves, but not so much fantasy. In elementary school I remember going through a fairy tale and mythology phase, but I never got into pure fantasy. Heinlein's books were one of my first literary loves, also!

I have a Kindle now with about 1300 books on it, and I never go anywhere (other than work) without it. If I do happen to be somewhere without it and I have to wait, I have a Kindle app on my phone and can pull up any book from my collection. I'm often reading two or three different books simultaneously.

It's so cool to discover that there are SO many others who are the same way about reading!! !

I have always loved reading, especially history, sociology, and biographies. I used to go to the library once a week, but now I read discounted Kindle books on my Android phone and tablet.

I hope to one day find a nice girl, and she just has to love reading. I can imagine myself spending all night just discussing books with someone.
Sadly I'll probably never find that girl.

I've always loved reading and still do to this day.

I'm a librarian by profession. When I was a child, it was the classics -- I read Jane Eyre around 40 times straight and my parents had a Jane Eyre Fan Club shirt made for me. Later though, Villette, also by Charlotte Bronte, displaced Jane Eyre as my favorite novel. The protagonist Lucy Snowe seemed very much like a character on the outside of society looking in and I identified with her. (Isn't there a Lucy Snowe somewhere on this forum?) On the basis of their lives and writing, I think the Brontes would likely be diagnosed on the spectrum if they were alive today.

However, as I got older I shifted towards non-fiction. I'm always looking to soak up information. If I read fiction today, it has to be a really good historical novel. Apart from classic movies, I prefer educational programming as well. I can be hyperlexic at times. If I walk into Books-a-Million, I generally end up with a pile of books pulled from various areas of interest and browsing through them until the store closes. Fortunately I don't do that everyday. I'm definitely a Word-Fact Aspie.

Hate reading.

Almost all Stephen King, Dean Koontz, JK Rowling... Most mystery writers.

Thanks for your replies everyone! I am so excited I found a group of women with similar interests as mine.

LOVE READING!! !! Anything and everything.

It was English classics and sci-fi when young. I especially liked Wuthering Heights and turned straight back to page one when I finished it. LOVED George Eliot and Huckleberry Finn (not English I know). Later read Albert Camus The Plague.

At 18 was reading a medical encyclopaedia and got into non fiction which is my favourite now. I avidly read theology especially mystical, and study microbiology.

I was a good reader as a child, pretty much taught myself how to read and rather than having to read the silly word cards when I started school was given a reading book instead. I had my favourite books and would be very reluctant to read anything that wasn't by my favourite authors. I still have a lot of those books and still read them even now but on a whole, I don't really read fiction books. I would much rather be reading a biography or some other non-fiction book that I can learn something from and I think the reason people say I know so much and would be brilliant on a quiz team is because of this.

I have a part time job in a book shop and we have so many people coming asking for books on vampires but I really do not get the fascination with them at all. I've never really been into fantasy-type books anyway.

Another reading aspie joining in ^_^

I love reading - always have - so much that I got myself a degree in it (literature) and there's no sign of me slowing down. I probably spend more time reading than almost anything else...

Love this thread. I love reading too and always have done - I read at least two or three books a week. I'll read anything, at the moment I'm reading a lot of psychological thrillers like Gone Girl and Before I Go To Sleep. I'm also half way through 12 Years a Slave and re-reading The Complete Aspergers Syndrome by Tony Attwood. I re-read books a lot. When I'm not reading books, I'm reading things online - I hate clicking on an interesting link and finding it's a video. I want to READ not watch something.

Has anyone tried going to a book group? I went to one a few times but I found it quite hard to discuss the books with other people - they had different interpretations of the characters which just didn't occur to me and I felt a bit lost for words which is my standard modus operandi in social situations but I thought it may be easier if the chat was about books. I'd hoped it would be a good way of socialising and making friends but I was disappointed. It ended up with my only contributions being supplying factual information about the author's previous work, when the novels were published, which one won the Booker prize etc.

I like reading. I read a lot of manga. I am currently reading the Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner. You should check it out if you like the hunger games.
Also I read the divergent books recently. Those are good too.

I love to read. My favorite genres are sci-fi ,biographies,political thrillers and history.