Kylie's Book Log

Book: 13
Title: Dry
Author: Augusten Burroughs
Genre: Memoir
Summary: Augusten Burroughs' memoir of recovery from alcoholism.
Why did you get this book? I have a long-running interest in addiction-recovery memoirs, and Running with Scissors proved to me that Burroughs has got serious writing chops, so.
Did you enjoy the book? This book was seriously fantastic. No, really. This is the sort of book where I want to shove everyone toward the bookstore with the title and author written on a little slip of paper in their hands, and if they don't go I want to redirect them and then keep poking them in the back until they go and get this book. ::sigh:: I mean, okay. It isn't perfect -- what book is? -- and people who are less into this particular genre than I would doubtless be more prone to pointing out the flaws rather than flailing over the good parts. But Burroughs' writing has a surprising and unique quality of drawing you into the experience and making you feel, not what he feels when he's writing it, but what he felt while he was living through the events he's writing about. The result is a reading experience of extraordinary immediacy. Dude knows how to write.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I'm not sure if I'll read his new memoir, Magical Thinking. I hear it's, well, really depressing. Given what I've said before about how immersive the experience of reading a Burroughs memoir is, I'm not all that sure that I'd handle the new one terribly well.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? It's a library book, but I want to buy it.
Anything else? Not really.
Scale of 1 to 10: 9/10

Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
Book: 3
Title: Running with Scissors
Author: Augusten Burroughs
Genre: Memoir
One-sentence summary: Augusten Burroughs had one hell of a fucked-up childhood.
Why did you get this book? I had a copy of it lying around the house that someone had given me, and when I read an absolutely amazing interview with him I had to start reading it immediately.
Do you like the cover? Yeah, it's fun. A kid with a giant cardboard box on his head. I don't know why it's that because among all the wacky shit that happened a cardboard box on someone's head was not actually part of it, and the metaphor doesn't resonate for me all that well because... because... because this book is seriously crazier than anything ever in the entire world and a cardboard box-head does not begin to cover it. But it's a funny picture.
Did you enjoy the book? I did. It was *insane*. I just do not even have words and am not going to attempt to describe. But, yeah, he's quite the writer.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? Yes, and yes. I'm quite interested in both his other memoirs, Dry (a memoir of alcoholism and, one infers, recovery) and the new one about his father that I don't remember the name of.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping it unless my friend comes back to claim it, which seems unlikely as she moved transcontinentally and gave me the books she couldn't bring with her.
Anything else? I liked this book!
Scale of 1 to 10: 9