The Gift
Book Review 1

At the moment it's the most fantastic book on the market to explain dyslexia. I found out about it on the Internet. It came up as one of the best-selling books and I read excerpts from it.

One of the most important things he says is at the beginning of the book, when he says that there's no two dyslexic people alike. That's got to be remembered at all times. It was very interesting and also sometimes exciting, when you associate yourself with some of the things being said. Another important thing is that this book gives answers to the unanswerable questions. For example, sometimes we know things are going to happen before they happen, but we don't know why we know. It's like our curiosity combines with our perception and the brain computes it and comes up with the answer before it's actually happened.

It talks about this dyslexic experience of disorientation. I think the best way of describing it is the feeling you get when you're in the station and the train next to you pulls off and you think you're moving. I'd like to give you an example of the positive side to disorientation. My wife can't stand driving round roundabouts. She becomes disorientated on a roundabout, but my disorientation helps me negotiate exactly where I am on the roundabout and exactly where everybody else is. It's as though I've got the bird's eye view of the roundabout and this is me clicking into my disorientation. Everything else is disorientated around me, but I'm not.

I feel that if I ever got the opportunity to fly a helicopter I would probably make quite a good pilot because it's like I've got my own gyroscope floating around in my own head to keep me level with everything. Other non-dyslexic people don't seem to have this enhanced part of the brain.

I read up to Chapter 24, but didn't read the last part of the book, which deals with the Davis' training methods. I remember clearly the parts where he talks about the dyslexic child being inquisitive about their environment. It's just an insatiable and naturally strong urge which you've got. It talks about this environmental curiosity causing the dyslexic to shift their attention. If they find the object of curiosity interesting they will pay more attention to it than other things in the environment. I've always had that, but never had the right people to explain certain things to me. I only found out a couple of years ago about this and then it made sense to me why I had been so depressed when I was younger. My environment was so depressing and I was in a situation which I couldn't get out of, so I had to wait until I got old enough to get out of it. I did have this strong self-belief. In one way you have to put yourself on a pedestal, because if you don't you'll never get anywhere.

I also found out that most of us dyslexics have a really strong memory and can think back to before we were one year old. My memories also include textures and smells and, if you go deep enough, you can go into the emotional side of it as well … the sad times.

It also talks about the saving grace of dyslexics being their ability to daydream; just escape and think about better things when you're stuck in a rut. It gives you hope … although I think some of us have this ability to hope and some of us don't. If you don't, some people go into a deep depression and never come out of it.