Book #90: Thinking in Pictures

Title: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Author: Temple Grandin

It's almost a universal that the book is going to be better than the movie. I've rarely walked out of a movie and said, "Wow, that movie blew the book out of the water." We watched the film adaptation of Thinking in Pictures a year or so ago, and I loved the movie, so I had high hopes for the book. As much as I admire Temple Grandin for what she has accomplished (which would be remarkable even if she didn't have autism), I feel like the film version of this story took all of the really compelling parts of Grandin's story and made them come to life in a way that they don't on the pages of this book (I guess that shouldn't be all that surprising). I'd expected a fuller analysis of Grandin's life, a richer look at her motives and her inner life, which are probably unrealistic things to expect, and instead I got a lot of the same information about autism that I've already read in other books. If you're only going to read one of Grandin's books, I'd say this is a good one, but if you've read some of her other books about autism, I'd skip this book and just watch the movie.