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Carolyn's review

Possible Side Effects
by Augusten Burroughs

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61115.Possible_Side_Effects?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Possible Side Effects" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1170559303m/61115.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61115.Possible_Side_Effects?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Possible Side Effects</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3058.Augusten_Burroughs">Augusten Burroughs</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/12424776?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars Another great book from one of my favorite authors. I bought this for my dad as well. He also loved it.
 
 Favorite quotes:
 Although my parents never attended church or mentioned Jesus except when they screamed at each other—and then they used his full name, 'Jesus Fucking Christ'.
 
 I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.
 
 The thing is, I worship John Updike...I would drink his bathwater.
 
 He tossed his head slightly, in such a way as to cause his hair to sweep back. This made me feel actual pain, so extreme was my hair envy.
 
 Now maybe I'm just ultrajudgmental, but I really feel that only two groups of people have any business collecting dolls: little girls and grown women who lost all their children in fiery car accidents. Other than these two exceptions, doll collecting is just plain creepy.
 
 For someone like me, somebody who has large vacant holes where character should be...
 
 Touring a client's factory was akin to spending the afternoon with the parents of the world's ugliest baby and being forced to endure eight hours of home movies.
 
 I remained quiet for a moment because i could not risk opening my mouth and having 'Now listen here you stupid motherfucker' come out.
 
 There's probably not a connection, but when I started drinking again, my apartment wandered back into squalor.
 
 I, with my salad bar of insecurities...
 
 Now, I found myself having third, fourth, fifth dates with people i didn't care for. Even people that i loathed and wished would get caught in a grinding, malfunctioning escalator.
 
 There is a little German in me, therefore I don't do cuddly.
 
 Be excited when you encounter cosmetic surgery mistakes. Be excited when a birth defects marathon runs on The Discovery Channel. But don't be excited because you had some coffee.
 
 When you insult the Midwest—land of corndogs, casseroles, and all my favorite packaged food products—you insult me.
 
 Give me down. And give me polaroids of the fifty geese that had to die in the process.
 
 There was smooth, creamy dog shit everywhere, blended into the cedar chips like some kind of awful urban casserole.
 
 ...whose name had simply bounced off my forehead.
 
 She was incredibly funny, but in a way that made you say, 'That's horrible,' before you laughed until you accidentally farted.
 
 As with most things from childhood, I eventually outgrew my love for McDonald's and my desire to be an Afro-American. I adjusted to my own life as a standard-issue white male alcoholic.
 
 But perhaps my gay gene, the gene responsible for my desire to own platform shoes at an early age, somehow mutated because of my mother's heavy hairspray use.
 
 If a green body-builder with acromegaly or a geriatric dwarf who lived in a hollow tree didn't sing, dance, or otherwise celebrate the product, I didn't want it on my plate.
 
 Any of us would happily have licked the inside of a toilet rather than attend music class. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/159227?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Carolyn's review
rating:

Another great book from one of my favorite authors. I bought this for my dad as well. He also loved it.

Favorite quotes:
Although my parents never attended church or mentioned Jesus except when they screamed at each other—and then they used his full name, 'Jesus Fucking Christ'.

I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.

The thing is, I worship John Updike...I would drink his bathwater.

He tossed his head slightly, in such a way as to cause his hair to sweep back. This made me feel actual pain, so extreme was my hair envy.

Now maybe I'm just ultrajudgmental, but I really feel that only two groups of people have any business collecting dolls: little girls and grown women who lost all their children in fiery car accidents. Other than these two exceptions, doll collecting is just plain creepy.

For so...more

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message 1: by Bill

01/17/2008 10:43AM

Surely I really have read this, but I don't think I ever laughed as hard as I just have sitting in the SF airport! He is so funny!!! I'm going home and reading this AGAIN!Dad