Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

There is something about this book, which I cannot put my finger on. It is horrifying, disgusting yet funny and witty. This book literally made me sick when I was done with it. Actually, it lingered on my mind and my me physically sick for a couple of days after. I am definitely not homophobic but I just cannot shake off the horrible feeling after reading about the way he described about his underage sexual encounters with Bookman and about how he found out about his mum's gay affair. Dr Finch is so bizarre I cannot believe anyone would actually go to him for any advice and his house..to say it's a pig sty is probaby an understatement. It is interesting and not a hard book to read but it is just...what's the word for it...controversial I would say.

From Publishers Weekly
"Bookman gave me attention. We would go for long walks and talk about all sorts of things. Like how awful the nuns were in his Catholic school when he was a kid and how you have to roll your lips over your teeth when you give a blowjob," writes Burroughs (Sellevision) about his affair, at age 13, with the 33-year-old son of his mother's psychiatrist. That his mother sent him to live with her shrink (who felt that the affair was good therapy for Burroughs) shows that this is not just another 1980s coming-of-age story. The son of a poet with a "wild mental imbalance" and a professor with a "pitch-black dark side," Burroughs is sent to live with Dr. Finch when his parents separate and his mother comes out as a lesbian. While life in the Finch household is often overwhelming (the doctor talks about masturbating to photos of Golda Meir while his wife rages about his adulterous behavior), Burroughs learns "your life [is] your own and no adult should be allowed to shape it for you." There are wonderful moments of paradoxical humor Burroughs, who accepts his homosexuality as a teen, rejects the squeaky-clean pop icon Anita Bryant because she was "tacky and classless" as well as some horrifying moments, as when one of Finch's daughters has a semi-breakdown and thinks that her cat has come back from the dead. Beautifully written with a finely tuned sense of style and wit the occasional clich‚ ("Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal") stands out anomalously this memoir of a nightmarish youth is both compulsively entertaining and tremendously provocative.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison

I like reading about people who are "different" if there is a politically correct way of saying it. I think it opens our minds to the world out there and encourages respect and tolerance. Have been fascinated ever since I watched a clip of Daniel Tammet on youtube. It's just incredible what they can do. This book is insightful and sometimes funny. You feel wronged for Robinson about how people treat him in his early years but at the same time feel so proud of what he has been able to achieved.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Robison's thoughtful and thoroughly memorable account of living with Asperger's syndrome is assured of media attention (and sales) due in part to his brother Augusten Burroughs's brief but fascinating description of Robison in Running with Scissors. But Robison's story is much more fully detailed in this moving memoir, beginning with his painful childhood, his abusive alcoholic father and his mentally disturbed mother. Robison describes how from nursery school on he could not communicate effectively with others, something his brain is not wired to do, since kids with Asperger's don't recognize common social cues and body language or facial expressions. Failing in junior high, Robison was encouraged by some audiovisual teachers to fix their broken equipment, and he discovered a more comfortable world of machines and circuits, of muted colors, soft light, and mechanical perfection. This led to jobs (and many hilarious events) in worlds where strange behavior is seen as normal: developing intricate rocket-shooting guitars for the rock band Kiss and computerized toys for the Milton Bradley company. Finally, at age 40, while Robison was running a successful business repairing high-end cars, a therapist correctly diagnosed him as having Asperger's. In the end, Robison succeeds in his goal of helping those who are struggling to grow up or live with Asperger's to see how it is not a disease but a way of being that needs no cure except understanding and encouragement from others. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

I like the way this book is written. It's easy to read and the characters are interesting. The main character in the book - Sultan...despite all the knowledge he gained by reading, I feel that he learned nothing from them. He rules his household with an iron fist and yet it seems that everything is still out of his control. A good view of how the Afghan people live. A society caught in between the modern world and it's tradition is how I feel.

From Publishers Weekly
After living for three months with the Kabul bookseller Sultan Khan in the spring of 2002, Norwegian journalist Seierstad penned this astounding portrait of a nation recovering from war, undergoing political flux and mired in misogyny and poverty. As a Westerner, she has the privilege of traveling between the worlds of men and women, and though the book is ostensibly a portrait of Khan, its real strength is the intimacy and brutal honesty with which it portrays the lives of Afghani living under fundamentalist Islam. Seierstad also expertly outlines Sultan's fight to preserve whatever he can of the literary life of the capital during its numerous decades of warfare (he stashed some 10,000 books in attics around town). Seierstad, though only 31, is a veteran war reporter and a skilled observer; as she hides behind her burqa, the men in the Sultan's family become so comfortable with her presence that she accompanies one of Sultan's sons on a religious pilgrimage and witnesses another buy sex from a beggar girl-then offer her to his brother. This is only one of many equally shocking stories Seierstad uncovers. In another, an adulteress is suffocated by her three brothers as ordered by their mother. Seierstad's visceral account is equally seductive and repulsive and resembles the work of Martha Gellhorn. An international bestseller, it will likely stand as one of the best books of reportage of Afghan life after the fall of the Taliban.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Front by Patricia Cornwell

Just finished reading Patricia Cornwell's latest book - The Front....verdict..I really really don't like it. I have always been a big fan of Patricia Cornwell, but somehow this book just does not do it for me. There is not much of a plot...if there is, I am missing most of it. The characters are bleh and just not into each other.
I would not waste good money on this book. One of the worst book I have read so far. So boring =0(.

From Publishers Weekly
At the start of this weak sequel to 2006's At Risk from bestseller Cornwell, Monique Lamont, a politically ambitious D.A., uses a speech at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass., to launch an implausible anticrime initiative she's labeled No Neighbor Left Behind ("The decline of neighborhoods is potentially as destructive as global warming"). Lamont orders her main investigator, Win Garano, to reopen the case of a blind English woman, Janie Brolin, murdered in Watertown in 1962. Lamont suspects Brolin may have been the first victim of the notorious Boston Strangler. For reasons that Lamont fails to coherently articulate, solving this crime will galvanize the public into caring about crime in general. Not incidentally, it will also bolster her chances of ascending to greater power. Lamont's irresponsible approach to her job may strike some readers as bizarre, while Garano's ambivalence about his boss adds little to his appeal. The unsophisticated depiction of power politics (e.g., Lamont suggests to the governor of Massachusetts that solving Brolin's murder will make him Time magazine's man of the year) is not what the legions of Kay Scarpetta fans have come to expect.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.