Magical Thinking

There are few authors who can write autobiographically-based short stories and end with me desperately wanting to befriend them. Not that it would work...I'm a bit more enthusiastic than Augusten Burroughs might care to handle.

I'm starting to lose count of the number of times I've read this.

I like Augustin Burroughs. This didn’t sound quite like what I’m used to. It’s more like reading David Sedaris than Dry or Running with Scissors. It was interesting, but not particularly funny (though the story about the downs syndrome one night stand was funny in a horrible sort of way).

He spends a lot of time on his relationship with his current partner and his dating life before the current partner. It isn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t as good as his others and there weren’t many stories that captured my imagination or really stand out after reading.

Either I've become a cranky, old woman, or this book is really terrible. I forced myself to read all of the essays in this book because reviewers from such notable newspapers as The New York Times and The Chicago Sun-Times have described other works by Augusten Burroughs with such words as "entertaining", great", "breathtaking", and "funny". I found no reason to laugh or smile throughout this book. Rather, I found this book lacked any grace. Additionally, I was offended by lines such as the following which others might have found entertaining:

"But Dennis and I will have none of this madness. Neither of us wants to accept the special challenges presented by a severely handicapped Romanian child or a baby who was born addicted to crack show more and has only half a head."

"After a year, my body was transformed. But only from Auschwitz into lean."

"When I get a craving for Nature, I turn on the Discovery channel and watch bear-attack survivors recount their horror and show the results of their reconstructive surgery."

I think I've had my fill of this author's crude attempts at humor. show less

Boy, is this outside my normal parameters!

Burroughs' writing is candid, direct, and sometimes uncomfortable. But his skill with words and feelings is so precise, I was driven from page to page to follow his thinking and explore his life. This series of essays is alternately funny, touching, hilarious, off-putting, amusing, and horrifying. But it is, in the end, uplifting and hopeful. To find that one person you feel blessed to share oxygen with is the ultimate goal of most humans - and Burroughs has found his. How blessed he is.

This is an excellent book, that I would recommend, even to my white-bread arrow-straight friends. I'm white-bread and arrow-straight myself, and I found it truly intriguing.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and really appreciate Burroughs style. I know some find his humor to be a little off-putting, but I think it's highly entertaining and keeps the pages being turned.

A collection of humorous stories about dating, careers, strange characters, and just some of the odd situations that result from living in a big city. Mr. Burroughs' strange life and experiences give him a wealth of material for such a book and his wit in recounting them adds to the merit.

His authorial voice holds nothing back. His inner thought life is revealed to the reader and there is much to identify with. You will laugh audibly in public places while reading this book. You have been warned!

I LOVED this one. Definitely the best out of the recent string of "books written by gay men who are sometimes featured on NPR," and by far my favorite of Augusten Burrough's. I laughed out loud at nearly every chapter, and I'm not a laugher.