Magical Thinking

I have a startling confession to make, brace yourself....I have neither read nor watched Running with Scissors. I know, I'm deeply ashamed. It's not the story's fault. The movie is everywhere, on cable, at the library, at the video store. I pick it up, I look at it and back on the shelf it goes. I' m not in the mood. I need something light, happy, uplifting....blah, blah, blah

Running with Scissors is one of those books I always think I should read...like any of Jane Austen's or Sylvia Plath. Yet, I don't. It's not that I don't like Augusten Burroughs-I do, I do. Sellevision was great, especially considering he wrote the whole book in something like 14 days. Dark, humorous, a sarcastic peak at home shopping networks. Any book which manages to subtle make fun of the American public is great in my book (the biting scene where the woman wants to buy the kid- best scene in the whole book).

I also recently picked up Magical Thinking- a collection of essays that doesn't read like a collection of essays. Augusten writes like the rest of us think....well the rest of us who are mean, and bitchy, and a have a really, really, really dark side. Augusten seems to have taken Socrates words of an unexamined life is not worth living to heart as very few moments seem to be taboo. Whether he is writing about living in utter filth, a feud with a diminutive Nazi housekeeper, or an Easter egg hunt of dog feces, he writes with an honesty that is both compelling and somewhat stomach turning.

Now that I've read this...Running with Scissors-I'm coming for you.