On Augusten Burroughs

I asked a cute girl that I "met" not long ago to recommend me a good book to read in my free time; she came up with a couple of authors and a handful of their titles. And that's how I end up with Magical Thinking sitting on my night table.

Now that I'm done with it, I'm planning to write her a little note thanking her -you know, Good Manners 101- but I'm struggling what to say in that e-mail.

Plainly speaking I didn't like that book. It features some unconnected stories about AB's life, some of his thoughts on this and that, and nothing else. Is like if he had a blog and putted together his favorite posts, sent them to his agent and voila a new book.

Now if I put myself in my friend's shoes, I wouldn't appreciate someone coming to me and saying that my literary recommendations suck; fuck no, you can keep your literary thoughts for your shallow self. And by the same token I don't want to bullshit her praising such a shitty book. It has to be something in between. Hmmmmm I guess I'll have to do some thinking here.

I guess I'm just going to say that I still don't know what to think about AB's work, so that once I finish reading "CRY" and "Running with a Machete" I'll figure out what's all the fuzz and all the NYT bestseller shit that is printed all over his books about; and who knows, maybe he's a good author after all. Even more so, she just send me an e-mail about some other stuff, so for sure I could squeeze a line or two about AB in my reply and end of the story.

Hopefully she's very busy these days with her new job or perhaps is busy shopping for colorful underwear with (or is it without?) seams up the middle at VS and would not give much thought to my message. We'll see.

Oh by the way, my dear Jennifer, please don't read this post. cheers!