A Couple of Book Reviews

So I'm finding myself without any inspiration for writing this morning so I thought to myself, why not just post about a couple of books you've read this month. So, here goes...

I read A Wolf At the Table A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs. I love Augusten's way with words. He is one of my favorite writers of memoir. He has this way of taking small moments, events, parts of his life and writing them with such a big way. He could take a boring day of my life and make it sound amazing I think.

This book was the hardest for me to read. It chronicles the authors relationship with his father. Let's just say that his father is the worst person on the face of this earth and treated Augusten as such. I kept wishing that instead of his dad playing all of the sick mental games he'd just beat the hell outta Augusten.

I'm not sure I completely recommend this book. If you want a raw, honest memoir of a screwed up upbringing read on my friends. It's shockingly honest and at times I just found my jaw in a dropped position and thinking...oh no he didn't....

The first book I read of his was Running With Scissors. OMG! This book kicked it all off for me. Once I read about how his mother sent him to live with her psychotherapist at the age of like 12 and then there is a pedophile living in that house and you can imagine what happens next, I was hooked. I read Dry, Magical Thinking, Possible Side Effects, Sellevision. All memoir except Sellevision.

Another memoir I finished reading Saturday night was The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. OK, I'm not sure which of these authors had a more screwed up childhood. If you've not read The Glass Castle yet, run, don't walk to your nearest book provider. Really. It is the story of how Jeanette Walls grew up in a very different way than most of the world. Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads....and the story goes on.

Walls' goal (at least how I understand) in writing this book was to provide perspective to people who will never experience the uglies of poverty in childhood. Like being dirty, having very few clothes, never having food to eat, rummaging through trash cans for food to eat. This story is so unbelievable. Read. It. Now.

And if you haven't entered my pay it forward giveaway v3.0 go now and enter. It ends August 23rd.