Book Watch: Possible Side Effects
Possible Side Effectsby Augusten Burroughs
Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pub Date: May 2, 2006
ISBN: 0312315961
This book is approved for consumption by those seeking pleasure, escape, amusement, enlightenment, or general distraction. This book is not approved to treat disorders such as eBay addiction or incessant blind dating.
In studies, some people reported inappropriate, convulsive laughter, a tingling sensation in the limbs, and sudden gasping. Fewer than 1 percent reported narcolepsy.
Doll collectors may experience special sensitivity, as may discourteous drivers, candy-company brand managers, and nicotine-gum users.
This book has been shown to be especially helpful to those with parents, grandparents, life partners, and incontinent dogs. People with dry, cracked skin have responded well to this book, as have people with certain heart conditions.
Do not operate heavy machinery while reading this book, until you know what effects it may have on you.
This text is contraindicated in those suffering from certain psychiatric disorders, including—but not limited to—readers afflicted with anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure.
Ask your doctor about Possible Side Effects.
Labels: book watch
Burroughs is great!!!
Mina
5/02/2006 03:47:00 PM
I love Augenten Burroughs. He's very witty, and just hilarious!
Not sure though which of those things he related about his life really happened. :S I read his memoir years ago. I laughed and was horrified at the same time! He really is talented LOL. But after the Jame Frey fiasco, you can't help but wonder if Burroughs did the same thing.
Oh well, i still think his books are great reads. And yes, i'll still buy this new one of his. LOL :P
5/02/2006 04:09:00 PM
From Publisher Weekly:
"The thin story lines--a visit from the tooth fairy, a trip to the doctor, house-training a puppy—suggest that Burroughs's well-mined vein of life experience may be played out. He fattens up the material--a (Frey-inspired?) disclaimer warns some events have been "expanded and changed"--in ways that sometimes ring false, especially in his childhood reminiscences, which are improbably detailed and infused with an adult sense of camp. Often, though, the only thing animating the writing is the author's perverse imagination. Fortunately, Burroughs has superb comic sensibility, throwing off sparkling riffs on everyday humiliations in a voice that's alternately caustic and warm, bitchy and self-deprecating. His self-involvement can get claustrophobic, but when he steps outside his head no one is funnier or more perceptive."
5/02/2006 04:13:00 PM
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