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From My Amazon Blog

I said...

Amazon.com: Terry Bain's Amazon Blog: I don't read Augusten Burroughs books. For the most part, I don't have to. Instead, I buy them for my wife. It's a no-brainer gift. I don't have to prepare, to worry, to think about whether she will like the gift or not. There are no questions about if the book will fulfill its obligation for her. I know she will read the book. It won't sit on a shelf. She won't say “who is this?” I buy the Augusten Burroughs and I wrap it (or I don't) and I give it to her, and within the next few minutes she's reading. She's utterly captivated. She's laughing, and she's reading me passages out loud.Sometimes I can tolerate this. Other times, I can't.It's not that I don't like to be read to. I do like that. It's just, well, Mr. Burroughs requires the kind of attention and distraction and utter preoccupation that I simply don't always want to devote. So I'm read to, and I may be heaving and crying and asking her to stop. To please stop. I can't breathe. I feel as if I am about to enter cardiac arrest. I feel as if my body will shut itself down any moment and I will become frozen. Furniture of gold or cement. As if Augusten's books are like the touch of Midas... only they simply take the oxygen from my body so that I become a frozen human. A corpse. An ottoman. So I don't read his books myself. By the time I've heard six or seven or eight passages, I can't go into those pages myself anymore. There is something sad about this, but also something refreshing. I can feel as if I've read that. I've experienced those pages. And I don't have to put in the work myself. And I can share the experience of having read it.Despite whatever annoyance I may (at times) show about being read to, in the broad view I don't mind. It's better this way. (I don't have time to become utterly bored with the author's navel gazing.) This may be the only way I can enjoy Augusten. Read aloud. In pieces. My side aching. Gasping for breath.

...and that is all that I said.

Tags: augustenburroughs | author | book | funny | laughter | possiblesideeffects | wife | sidesplitting.

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