This is how proven aid in overcoming shyness, molestation, fatness, spinsterhood, grief, disease, lushery, decrepitude & more-- for young and old alike

Augusten Burroughs is Brene Brown's shit talking older brother. He's examining much of the same issues but drawing from his own life experience involving abuse, alcoholism, suicide and the death of a loved one.

While he's a tad inconsistent when it comes to kids, and I'm still not sure how I feel about his fat chapters, he still gets the same pass as any self-help book. There comes no expectation of hitting it out of the park every time. And maybe he falters here because he's at his most compelling when he's drawing from his own life experience, and as a childless, average framed, gay man he's a bit out of his element talking about anorexia or losing a child.

Still, Augusten is a straight-talking, no-nonsense story teller and proves a welcome respite from the more airy, optimism indicative of the genre.

I feel like I got tricked into reading a self-help book. Initially, I was loving the “if you don't feel well, don't smile” ideologies of Burroughs but after chapters like “How to be Thin” and advice on how to cope with a loved one's terminal illness, I was kind of over it. Does this make me a bad person? Maybe. I'm ready to get back to reading some literature.