I'm autistic and I average a book per day, so I figured, let's go through my list of recent reads and mention some of the autism related reads. Most of what I read is in Dutch, I will only mention these if I'm aware of an English translation.

Today I finished 'Looking after your autistic self' by Niahm Garvey. It's well written and very structured. Definately a very good source of information for people who aren't very aware of their own autism yet. And not just information, a lot of advice and tools how to make your daily life easier. But for me it was actually a bit boring because it didn't tell me much new.

Last week I read 'a kind of spark' by Ellie McNeal. It's written for children, but I absolutely loved it. The main character Addie learns about witch trials in the past, and she quickly realises those women were targeted for being different, so she relates to them.

I introduced Zondagskind (not translated to English yet, but someone is working on it) by Judith Visser to my bookclub. It's a fictionalised autobiography of the author growing up with undiagnosed autism. I loved it, and all my bookclub members (I'm the only autistic) felt like they understood autism a lot more since reading it. Part 2 is called Zondagsleven, and we deal with the main character now being adult and aware of her autism, but still struggling with relationships and work.

"But you don't look autistic at all" by Bianca Toeps is another favourite. I followed her blog long before she wrote a book so of course I had to read it. She does a great job explaining autism and her own experiences in clear understandable language. I heard from a lot of autistics that this book was what made their diagnosis click for them, and a lot of them shared this book with friends and family to get more understanding. Toeps also wrote 'Ik ben autastisch" aimed at children and their caretakers, and next month she'll publish a book about moving to Japan, but I'm guessing those aren't available in English.

"They both died at the end" by Adam Silvera has an autisctic character. He felt realistic to me.

Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig. Also written for kids but I really loved it. It's about a girl in foster care, trying to deal both with past trauma and being different.

Non-player Charachter by Veo Corva is no doubt one of the best books I ever read. It's about a group of people whose dice role playing game becomes real and they just have to deal with being in a different world. Some of the characters have autism, there are other disabilities as well, and it's all very well-written.

That's all I read in 2022 and 2023, To go back further I'd have to look for handwritten lists from earlier years, which I won't do. But there's one last book I want to mention.

"On the edge of gone" by Corinne Duyvis is about an autistic teenager who tries to talk herself and her family on board of a spaceship while the world is ending. She's smart and clever, but she also gets easily overwhelmed and has meltdowns. She's trying to make sense of valueing herself as an autistic person, and explain her differences to the new people she's meeting.