By Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's Press
Hi, my name is Jill and I am addicted to Augusten Burroughs. I have been eagerly awaiting the release of You Better Not Cry since June 20. That is when I had the opportunity, thanks to the best library system in the world (Clark County Library District), to attend an evening with Augusten Burroughs. They may have called it a reading, but I will not, as there was no reading, just Augusten talking off the cuff. It was amazing…he is hilarious and also a lot thinner than I thought. Anyway, it was there that he shared the idea behind this new work. And now, after waiting all that time plus waiting my turn in the library hold system, I finally got to read it. I was not disappointed. Now, I admit, I may lack objectivity when it comes to Burroughs, but I do thoroughly enjoy all he has written. After Running With Scissors, Dry, and A Wolf At The Dinner Table, you feel as you know Burroughs intimately. The additional books of essays and stories are just like kicking back with a friend and sharing the embarrassing stories from our past (or yesterday!). Cry was no different. It is something I think we all can relate to, as Christmas can often fall below our expectations of the holiday. Now, I never ate a plastic Santa or slept with one either, but, it is always something. One thing Augusten does offer in all of his Christmas from hell stories is hope. Maybe, we can just appreciate the day and the season for what it is, a comedy of errors…and the birth of Jesus-Santa!
