Helpful Score: 5
Hysterical and touching. Burroughs has a gift for writing and a life that begs to be recorded. I love his work and this book was fantastic.
Helpful Score: 4
Okay Okay... I was one of those people that read Running with Scissors and hated it. I still do, I think it was too over-the-top. I know he says it all really happened and I hate to say I don't believe him, but well... I don't believe ALL of it. How's that? I bought his other books, but they'd been gathering dust. I dunno, I just wasn't up for reading more weird wacky maybe-half-true stuff. Then I read Dry. Now I've read Magical Thinking. The man can write, dammit. And his brutal, adult, honesty hits you square in the nose. Oh yes, yes yes, he's funny, but most of his stories have an undertone to them, an almost moral (I wonder if he knew that when he wrote it?). Even the funny housekeeper (my favorite), it shows what a pushover we all can be when people are pushy with us, but it also shows that all of us have a spine and we use it. I dunno, maybe I read too much into it.
This was by far my favorite book. I was hoping it would be a continuation of Dry, about him making his way back from where he left of in Dry, it was, kind of. It was a book of short story memoirs, I suppose. I'm going to read the next one soon, hopefully that will answer my questions more fully :)
This was by far my favorite book. I was hoping it would be a continuation of Dry, about him making his way back from where he left of in Dry, it was, kind of. It was a book of short story memoirs, I suppose. I'm going to read the next one soon, hopefully that will answer my questions more fully :)
Helpful Score: 4
"Ruthlessly funny...deliciously perverse...he extracts something funny from every shred of his own warped experience. Magical Thinking indeed."--People
Helpful Score: 3
Typical Augusten Burroughs. A quick light read that is disturbing at times but not nearly as disturbing as "Running"!
Helpful Score: 2
I loved Running with Scissors, and this memoir-like multiple-story book is at least as riveting, if not more so. Hilarious and thoughtful.