Athena

Awww, I'm sorry to hear you're feeling so sleepy. I had that too when I just started on my current medication, so I can understand it's difficult. I'm sorry to hear about the storm, I hope no one gets hurt or is without power, water, gas for too long. I'm glad you made it back from the shop, good that you have some food now to last you for a while. Sorry to hear you can't enjoy a more complicated book, I'm glad you're enjoying Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism at least. I hope you feel better soon Frankie, how long do you need to take the antibiotics for? After that your sleepyness should get better at least. Do they taste bad? I once had to take antibiotics too when I was badly ill and they tasted horrible (I was feeling horrible though and they helped so that's good). My boyfriend is often tired and sleepy during the day. It's best to make it through the day and sleep at night so your rhythym doesn't get moved too much, and if you lie down then do it only for a little while. But I can totally understand if you're too sleepy for that. My boyfriend is often tired but unable to fall asleep for a while, we try to get him to sleep at night and be awake during the day. It must be really annoying for you . I hope it gets better soon . Try to enjoy your book at least or doing other things. Your body needs time to heal. If I lived nearby I'd come and give you a real hug. EDIT: I thought Poppyshake was refering to the expression 'spilling the beans', in saying, when you feel better you can go and tell us lots more things, but I'm not sure.

Awww, well maybe you're just enjoying your normal reading? Btw, I giggled when I read "WC challenge", as in Dutch, WC is the abbreviation of the old fashioned word watercloset, we all say WC (in Dutch pronounciation 'weecee') and it means the toilet. So a toilet challenge .

Great haul, I hope you enjoy your books ! I always love it when the books in a series match each other. The board game sounds awesome! I googled for pictures, it looks really nice too.

Martine Delfos and Marijke Gottmer - A-ggZ: Leven met Autisme Genre: Information Format: Hardback (not hardcover) Pages: 177 Synopsis: (see below) My thoughts: I bought this book at a library sale. I've read one other book by Martine Delfos (Een Vreemde Wereld), when I was a teenager and really liked that one. I liked this book but unfortunately, due to my knowledge already on the subject, it didn't offer me a whole lot of new insight. There were some things that were new to me, but most of the information wasn't. This isn't the book's fault, I recently read, for example, Plan B by Marjon Kuipers-Hemken and Gijs Horvers (see an earlier review in this thread), which was published this year. This book (Leven met Autisme) was published in 2006. Despite this, I found that there were a few words being used that I would consider 'old-fashioned'. I don't hear them much being used these days (this could also be me). I also thought the writing style was a bit formal at times, the book doesn't read easily. I did enjoy reading this book. I also liked the cartoons, now and then there was a cartoon illustrating the subject or a situation, I quite enjoyed these. I felt the book could've talked a bit more to the person with autism (me) rather than to someone in the environment of. This is a problem many books have, though, most of them talk to the environment of the person. I'm not sure why to be honest, personally I feel the people themselves are important too (well, duh ). So overall I liked to read the book, but it wasn't brilliant. Rating: **** (7/10)

Awww, I hope you feel better soon. It could be the medication. I'm glad the people were nice, sorry you couldn't enjoy the full gig though because of your tiredness. I feel for you .

x That's excellent progress ! Congrats!

Thanks ! I'll see how I get on with The Chimes, that's the next one to read. I hope you enjoy The War of the Worlds, I've seen the film (or are there multiple?) and liked it, I would like to read the book sometime.

Oooh, that's sneaky! I didn't even think of doing that .

x Great haul ! I'm glad to hear Jojo is sleeping through the night a bit better, I hope you get some more time to read and do other things (and sleep!). Merry Christmas in advance to you too!!

I hope you had some fun, Frankie !

x Congrats ! x x I own this as an Ebook, though not specifically Kindle ebook. I haven't read it yet, I hope you enjoy it .

x Congratulations, Kay ! That's awesome! Time to celebrate.

Awww, I'm sorry to hear you're in so much pain . It's very nice of your partner to buy you a beautiful book to cheer you up. I hope you feel better soon .

I've been playing Pokémon X a bit lately. I stopped playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf after I'd played it for a while, because I didn't play for a few days and suddenly people moved out. This upset me, I don't like it when games tell me how often I should play them. Pokémon X is very fun, I'm quite enjoying that, but due to input issues I only play it now and then and not too often. I've been playing it for about 22 hours total and have one badge. I hope you find a nice game, Bobblybear! I'm sure a few people have played the games you mentioned, I think they liked them but hopefully they'll see this thread and answer you in person .

x Would love to see that film again! Unfortunately the DVD is packed away so I'll have to wait a while. I quite like to watch Home Alone and Home Alone 2 around Christmas time, when I was a child I watched Christmas themed films before Christmas but the past few years I haven't, really. To be honest, I've been too tired to even watch one episode of a TV show so I haven't watched anything in the past week or something. I've never seen The Muppet Christmas Carol, it sounds like fun though.

I started reading Christmas Books by Charles Dickens, which includes A Christmas Carol and four other Christmas themed short stories written by Charles Dickens. So far I'm enjoying the story (of A Christmas Carol) but the language used and the writing style are a bit complicated for me. I have to ask my boyfriend for words or look them up, and it seems to me the same things could've been said in an easier, shorter way rather than how it's written down. I'm also reading Martine Delfos and Marijke Gottmer - Leven met Autisme.

x Thanks .

Interesting book! It's hard to avoid sugar, and it does taste nice. I don't eat that much sugary things any more and don't really miss it, but from time to time I might eat something sugary.

Awww, I'm sorry to hear that. It's never nice when one isn't enjoying a book.

Interesting book, Julie ! I'd never ever dare to do a thing like that, nor would I want to. Their courage is admirable, though.

x Congrats that you'll be meeting your target ! That's excellent .

Marjon Kuipers-Hemken and Gijs Horvers - Plan B: Een Vernieuwende Handreiking voor Autisme & Communicatie Genre: Information Format: Hardback (not hardcover) Pages: 166 Synopsis: (see below) My thoughts: My mum read about this book being released and thought it might be useful for us. I was given it for my birthday and wanted to read it so I didn't wait too long before reading it. This book is about autism and communication. It's also about sensory issues and what happens when too much input is perceived, when processing input. It's written by someone who knows a lot about autism, has a lot of training in it and who has a son with autism, and by someone who has autism. I particularly enjoyed the illustrative examples of real people (including those from Gijs Horvers, one of the authors). There were one or two examples I liked less, because the things that happened wouldn't work for me, but I'm glad they work for the people involved. What I liked a bit less, for myself, was that a lot of the information seemed written for people close to someone with autism and not the person themselves (there are exceptions, though). There is a lot of good information in the book. I find though, that I just communicate the way I've learned it, I'm too tired to think about other layers of it, atm. I think though, that part might be mainly for people without autism, to know how to communicate better with people with autism, but I could be wrong. It was definitely interesting to read about. I quite liked the three states, green, orange and red, to do with the amount of sensory input processing (there are better words in Dutch but I'm not really sure what the best words for these things in English are). In green everything is fine, in red the person with autism panicks and can't respond accurately to input. In orange too much input has been given but it's possible to go back to green by doing certain things, such as take the input away (or the person away from the input). I think it'd be good for me to think about and better analyse when I'm in orange and what's too much and what's not. (As a side note: I need to think of which things give me energy rather than all those things that take it away. The problem is that a lot of the things I've thought up so far, all have their limits. Book buying cheers me up immensely, but I can't do it too much because of money and space reasons. Buying other things, the same rules apply. I can't eat too much nice stuff because I'm trying to lose weight and eat healthier. I can't have too many showers or baths in a day (not more than one), because of money reasons, water waste and it'd be unhealthy for my body. I can't spend too much time with my boyfriend because he needs to do his own things too. With the dogs and animals it really depends, how noisy and movement-full they're being. If one of our dogs just wants to be pet, that can be nice. But if the two of them are jaleous of each other or playing then it's tiring. I hope to be finding more things that give me energy.) The book talks about making a 'plan B' for when things don't entirely go the way you thought they would. It leaves things pretty generic but I think it'd be good for myself to think about. Anyway, about the book. I quite liked the layout of the book. The new smell (is it just me who likes the smell of new books?), the colours used, the bold that was used, the fonts, etc. The book also contains quite a few pictures, which I liked. I'll definitely let my parents read this book, my mum has already said she wanted to. Maybe afterwards we could talk about it, I think there's definitely some useful things in there. My boyfriend can't read much Dutch so unfortunately he couldn't read it if he wanted to (maybe in the future though). Overall I quite enjoyed this book, if not perhaps as much as I was hoping I would. But I quite enjoyed reading it and it'll be useful so that's good . Rating: ***** (9/10)

x I agree! That's how I feel about it as well. x x Thanks !

I'm glad you enjoyed Gone Girl, it's on my TBR. Nice reviews !

That sounds pretty terrible, Alexi and James!