Beau Weber Weber itibaren Gemeinde Stratzing, Avusturya itibaren Gemeinde Stratzing, Avusturya

Mary Şarabı

Suç yazmanın çarpıcı parçası. Rankin her zaman detaylara ve bıçak kenarı diyaloglarında bir yeteneğe sahiptir. En iyi henüz A Fleshmarket Close and Bleed Let.

Yeah, okay, parts of this are so absurdly funny that I laughed out loud, but for the most part, it just made me profoundly uncomfortable. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like the idea of reading about someone's abused, objectified, dissociated childhood for sheer entertainment value (an inherently depraved concept). Nevertheless, I finished it, probably out of some morbid curiosity to see if and how this youth would survive the tragic circumstances of his upbringing. In retrospect, I feel unclean - seedy, even - for having spent time gawking at the unwell - Augusten, his mother, his adoptive family.

(Original pub date: 1984) This is another one of those "reading list classics" that I figured I should try. Especially since it's really short! ;) The book consists entirely of vignettes from the author's childhood in a poor section of Chicago. The writing is beautiful and spare - no vignette is longer that 2 or 3 pages (and the font is huge and widely spaced). It reads like poetry, really - the words are potent and evocative rather than exhaustively descriptive. My reading of this book actually had some unexpected bonus material. I picked my copy up at a library used book sale in Maine, and the previous owner appears to have been a slightly dim-witted 8th or 9th grader who felt obliged to write inane comments in all the margins. When the author describes her annoyance at a tag-along little sister who just doesn't get it, the margins shout, "Is Nenny retarded?" An odd neighbor gets the same treatment: "Is Ruthie retarded?" By the time we get to the author's lovely description of her own weakness and vulnerability, a comparison between her and the skinny trees in front of her house, we've graduated to, "Eating disorder??? Why is she so thin?" Sigh. Pop psychology has clearly killed future generations' ability to process art. RIP, intelligent thought.

While this text has great questions, it's examples and the readability of the text is sub par. I hear that this is the case with his other books as well (ie Dynamics, Mechanics of Materials, etc).