Summary: Draws on the author's roller-coaster experiences with limited opportunities, successes and failures while offering darkly whimsical, no-holds-barred advice on surviving everything from riding elevators and gaining weight to finishing drinks and finding love. By the author of Running With Scissors. 350,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Burroughs, whose best-selling memoir, Running with Scissors (2002), documented horrific childhood abuse, is uniquely qualified to write a self-help book. He is a survivor, with intimate knowledge of many of the topics addressed in the genre. His advice here, whether about addiction, aggression, self-loathing, or denial, can be summed up in three words: get over yourself. Life is too short, he says, to do anything but live in the moment and focus on the good. Burroughs is bracingly honest, offering remedies for the world-weary, from teenage girls molested by their fathers to adults coming to terms with the death of a life partner. Burroughs, whose struggles with alcohol were documented in Dry (2003), doesn't believe in Alcoholics Anonymous, which requires members to admit powerlessness. A person needs power, he says, to abolish alcohol from his or her life. With his trademark blend of black humor and heart, Burroughs serves up tough love and reasons for hope: "If you hate life, you haven't seen enough of it," he writes in a chapter about suicide. "If you hate your life, it's because your life is too small and doesn't fit you. However big you think your life is, it's nothing compared to what's out there." HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With a first printing of 350,000 copies and extensive promotion in print and online, Burroughs' one-of-a-kind take on the how-to book will have his fans standing in line for advice. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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