Authors that speak to you as an Aspie

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Hey gang,

We as Aspies have a tremendously varied taste when it comes to a lot of things in culture. Our reading habits, however, are of particular interest.

Just curious what people's favourite authors are on here.

For me, I have a very wide and eclectic taste: Michael Ondaatje, Thomas Warton, Robert Sawyer, Hemingway and Alan Moore are just a few of my personal favourites.

Robert Heinlein is my favorite author, overall.

Orson Scott Card is definitely an author who speaks to me as an Aspie (especially Ender's Game.)

Another favorite is Connie Willis - I love her sense of humor.

I am also on a Heinlein kick. And I love Card as well.

I think Ayn Rand speaks to me as an Aspie despite the fact that I am an absolute hardcore liberal. Her writing style and manner of addressing topics seems quite accessible to me; I read her works for pleasure in high school. I certainly wouldn't call her my favorite.

I am a connoisseur of older science fiction and I think you'll find most of that to your Aspie tastes. I'm certainly not suggesting that I know you, but once again, the reading of Niven, Asimov, Bradbury and others just makes sense in a way.

It seems to me that what "blows" an NT's mind often does nothing for me. I cite as evidence the NYT bestseller list and popular book club selections. For nonfiction, Clifford Pickover did that a few times, though I thought his artificial storyline in a nonfiction text was unnecessary.

As a supplementary question, I'm curious - what/whom did you read during childhood?

Margaret Atwood and Pat Conroy are my favorites. I also really love Victorian literature, the Brontes and Jane Austen being my favorite authors of that time.

This is kind of a wierd one. I don't really read fiction any more, and I didn't even finish this book. It's called The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford. The film Full Metal Jacket is based upon it. But seriously, reading this guy's writing was like a bomb going off. There was something really loaded in his prose and style. I really should finish the last chunk of the book, but yeah. It's a real brutal thing.

George Orwell
Tom Stoppard's plays
Aldous Huxley
Ken Kesey

Tolkien means a lot to me in the sense that ever since I read LOTR at age 14 I'm kind of living in his world .. not rarely feeling more real to me than the real world .. maybe that intensity and separateness of his world is a bit AS-ish .. ?

Kornbluth feels very AS to me .. Not least the short story Marching Morons. An almost invisible tiny elite runs the planet (pretending they are humble servants) .. and the very silly and also hilariously funny crowd is being easily led

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

also admitting to feeling Aldous Huxley being a bit of a role model (I once found and wore his glasses in a dream!)

my favorite author is Douglas Coupland- he refers to AS in his books (notably JPod and Microserfs) it's possible that he has it. Just read some of his work and you'll see why. his prose is very blunt but also very descriptive and visual.

Coupland is pretty much the only author that i can relate to in any sort of meaningful way, he sees the modern world in a very AS way.

Another is James Joyce (who i also suspect AS) his writing is very unusual and hard to understand but it's so brilliant! a NT could not have written Finnegan's Wake or Ulysses!

Authors that appeal to me an an Aspie are those that detail the thought processes of their characters. It helps me to follow and understand motivations which are often lost on me with more current writing styles.

Aldous Huxley
Knut Hamsun
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Anton Chekhov
Philip K Dick

I also like fiction with an anthropological angle for similar reasons.

Ursula Le Guin

Robert Heinlein and H. Beam Piper. Also I like Olaf Stapledon's "Odd John," where I can relate to the "supernormal" characters' bafflement over how normal human characters think.

Basically I like stories where emotionally uncomplicated characters apply reason and tools to solve problems.

I've also read into the Shakespeare authorship mystery, and I find that more interesting than trying to understand the plays and poems themselves.

Philip K. Dick, hands down.

Personally, I'd say Albert Camus. There is just something in his prose that I relate to.

Also, Joseph Heller, I really enjoy his books and his sense of humour. Some of his books are meticulously researched as well.

On a baser level, the poet John Berryman. I usually do not like poetry, and there are very few poets that I enjoy, but the craziness of Berryman appeals to me--on one level it's just funny and a bit dark, on another it's much much deeper.

Limiting it to three was difficult, but those are the three that speak to me personally as an Aspie.

I <3 books.

David

Franz Kafka definitely speaks to me.

My favorite author has to be Garrison Keillor.

He writes about a ficticious community in Minnesota. I can identify with his work, do to the fact it speaks volumes about the culture in the Upper Midwest that I grew up and live in. It seems very much like an old shoe.

I also enjoy Bill Bryson's work. There is something about his style of writing that caught my eye, especially in his travelogues.

I personally like books the describe "place." Authors often skimp on the place, and instead focus on the interpersonal relationships and emotions. Also I enjoy books that are about similar life experiences that I have been in, or places and culture that I have lived in (this may explain why I have been reading a number of "growing up on the farm" memoirs here lately).

I read mostly non-fiction these days, but my favorite fiction authors are Peter Carey, Junichiro Tanizaki, Somerset Maugham, James Clavell, Honore' Balzac, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Henry James, E.M. Forster, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Bronte.

I'm also a huge modern poetry fan (one of my former special interests...now just a normal interest) and edited a literary magazine for almost 14 years.

Isaac Asimov! I've wondered if some of his characters are Aspies. I mean, they sound quite like me, for one. Like Janov Pelorat for one when he talks about his interest, myths.lolHe can go on and on listing examples, facts, etc. The Solarians, too. Well the Spacers in general. And those that Erythro chose. They were very unique individuals. Marlene and that one other guy, who was in the asteroids. Erythro chose them because it thought they had beautiful minds. Giskard trying to find out how the human mind works.

My other two favorites are Jean Plaidy and Lurlene McDaniel!

Do writers of telenovelas, and series count?