Blaze Ginsberg has high functioning autism and wrote this memoir while in his teens and early 20's. Originally, I read an excerpt of this book published in McSweeney's that centered around his crush on Hilary Duff that was hilarious. I find Blaze interesting, funny and a little sad. He writes about his life like a tv show where puts a title, date, summary, trivia, goofs and soundtrack. His taste in music, outside of Hillary Duff is extrodinary with a lot of great songs by Steview Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Sting, Cold Play & many others. While the format tells a lot about the way Blaze thinks, it's hard to read over an entire book especially as there's no real cohesive point to the book, only stories about his ongoing life organized into themes like a year of school, a crush on someone, thanksgiving, a group of friends, etc. My sister is disabled and unlike Blaze she doesn't fit well into a group of disabled students as her language based disability is unclassified. Her experiences and the way she communicates helped me relate to the book a little better than I think I would have otherwise and made me feel for Blaze when he retold storys where kids were being mean. By the end of the book I felt for the kid a lot as all he wants is a girlfriend and hasn't been lucky in love. He's awkward in social situations and deeply sensitive. His writing is at times hilarious and facinating how he sees things. He's pretty high functioning considering how severe his disability is and I think it mostly has to do with how amazing his family. His mother and aunts especially are wonderful.
All in all I think Blaze is an amazing kid and enjoyed reading about him but I wouldn't recommend this book as you get just as much out of the short story in McSweeney's.
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