Dry: A Memoir

Loved it

This is the second book i've read from this author. I loved the book. Love the author.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

rung "Dry"

This was the kind of book for me, that I wanted to keep reading but I was drawn in so much by him that I'd have to put it down and actually take a rest from it. I just love the way he writes. He doesn't mince words, gets right to the point. This, of course, makes it really harsh at times and you just want to drag him right out of the book and make him stop whatever self destructive behavior he's involved in at the time.
You definitely feel like you've been rung "Dry" by the time your done reading this.
I'd read Running with Scissors and thought I'd read something else by A. Burroughs and I will continue reading more of his work.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

caution do not put this book down

AA members can relate and laugh along as well as cringe

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Remarkable enough to make me cry

I've read all of Augusten's books and this one no doubt is my favorite. I had a difficult time putting the book down. It's written in such a way that you feel as though you are going through the motions (and emotions) with him. Powerful ending, I was sobbing.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

compelling, funny, and first rate

What a solid follow up to Running With Scissors. It's so nice that it isn't a let down after his brilliant, bestselling, and critically acclaimed account of his bizarre childhood. Dry is a must read on so many different and significant levels. It is at once profound and riotously funny--makes you stop and consider the consequences of your own behavior and laugh until your guts hurt. What more can you ask from a book? Like his previous literary efforts, this one is well worth the price . . . and then some.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Sobering story (no pun intended) Having read "Running With

Sobering story (no pun intended)
Having read "Running With Scissors," the prequel to this memoir, I cannot help but draw comparisons to
the memoir "'Tis," Frank McCourts followup to his moving childhood story, "Angela's Ashes." Both Running with Scissors and Angela's Ashes are gritty stories of growing up in extremely difficult circumstances in extremely dysfunctional family settings, and yet despite the environments these children grew up in, their stories are told with humor and the sort of tone you might expect from an innocent child who knows no other way of life. Of course, in both stories, the reader knows that the child will grow into adulthood without many of the basic tools needed to lead "normal" productive lives. Both "'Tis" and "Dry" demonstrate that what happened to these children, was plain and simply not funny. Augusten Burroughs is adept, however, in framing his adult struggle with sobriety with all the emotions that come with the human condition--sadness, anger--and yes, humor. I found myself rooting for him. If you are expecting another Running With Scissors, you will be disappointed, but if you are looking for a truthful narrative about one man's struggle with alcoholism, it is well worth the read.

Love Augusten

Ive read every book hes ever written, over and over, lol. Dry is my favorite, but all his books are AMAZING!!! Dry made me laugh and cry. Just a FABOLOUS book :)

At last!

Finally a book that honestly addresses the social reality of heavy use/abuse/addiction. Brilliant and absolutely hilarious.

Loved!

quick read.

Very inspiting Very inspiting

This book sure is more than what I was expecting. Truly fascinating and uplifting reading.

A haunting memoir

Augusten is easy to love. The detail in his memoir makes me feel like I have sat next to him during the darkest nights of his life. His writing leaves the reader as a witness to his inner voice, his personal narrative on himself and those around him. I feel like I understand him and I can relate. This book is intense and at times overwhelming. I like to read in bed just before I turn out the lights but I found myself staying up all night because I couldn't fall asleep without knowing the outcome of a situation Augusten was sharing. This is a fabulous follow up to his first memoir Running With Scissors but can stand alone as well. I read this because after his first memoir I felt like I had to know what happened next in his life. I wanted to know if he was ok. I found myself really caring about him. This memoir left me with the same feeling. I want more!

Fantastic read

I cried, laughed, and truely enjoyed this great read.

Love

I love Augsten
Couldnt put this book down

This man

Is magnificent.

Inspiring

Great book for anyone struggling with an addiction.

Great but...

Not as graphic as his last book which i personally preferred. It starts great but it seemed very short on the rehab part of his addiction. Then it was all emotional boring items and felt very repetative when he tried to stop drinking. But overall a great book highly recommened!

Got it for jury duty and never expected it

Sat down in the jury room waiting for to be called and bought on my Ipod. I'm in Alanon and have alot of people in my family who drink. It was an amazing to listen to and I don't think I would have the respect for my family who are sober until now I hugged my mom when I finished the book. He made me change my mind and made we want to read all of his books. Get it whether you have people who drink or don't.

Overall great and compelling

Dry is a pretty great book. I found myself (a straight person) relating not only to a gay love story, but also to the life of someone battling the chemicals Burroughs is. It does drag at parts, but over all is cuttingly funny, dampened soberingly by the downside of alcoholism, and come together in a great ending.

Good

Dry is the sequel to Burroughs's Running with Scissors. Augusten is all grown up and lives in New York doing advertising. Augusten has a problem, though: he is a serious alcoholic and doesn't even realize it. So his coworkers tell him that he needs to go to rehab. I expected the entire book to be about Augusten's experience getting sober in rehab, but in reality, his time in rehab accounted for only about fifty pages of the book. This would have been okay if Augusten's experiences after rehab had been more interesting. But they weren't. For over 100 pages, Augusten just rambled on about his new social life, his attendance of AA meetings, and his work. His experiences were rather normal for a
recovering addict and after reading his previous book, I was searching for some eccentricity or at least some entertainment. The ending, which I won't give away, made up a bit for the repetitive middle of the book.

Refreshingly, brutally honest.

I had not previously read any of Augusten Burroughs' work, but this book interested me because I had heard good things about his writings. I am also an alcoholic in active recovery, so I have read many books on the subject and heard my share of horror stories in meetings. What I hadn't experienced, however, was this particular author's incredible ability to show me his story.

This story grabbed me immediately, and I enjoyed it from cover to cover. The autobiographical account of his journey from almost losing is job due to his showing up at work smelling "like a distillery", to his being coerced into going into rehab; his subsequent entry into recovery, and his tentative re-entry into the "normal" world- every word of it rings true to those of us who have stumbled across the trecherous road of early recovery.

Burroughs' writing is eloquent; he vividly narrates scene after scene via his inner monologue, which is filled with bare-bones honesty and scathing wit. Self-effacingly describing his career in advertising as "perfect" for a man who has spent much of his life making things look more appealing than they are is a perfect segue into the his description of his other career as a drunk. Being a semi-functioning alcoholic is a talent that comes more naturally to those of us who had traumatic childhoods/parenting: we are used to lying, covering up and polishing off the tarnished veneers of our lives in order to self-preserve: to avoid other people trying to change our way of life. Burroughs' clearly had a ghastly upbringing -memories of which he occasionally injects into the story nonchalantly- and they hit the reader like a splash of cold water in the face.

To read this story is to truly step into the mind of an alcoholic. The hardest pill for many a non-alcoholic to grasp is that beneath the self-seeking, cruel and self-defeating actions symptomatic of many a diseased alcoholic is a very big, very desperately loving heart. This is perhaps the cruelest burden the alcoholic carries, as we see Burroughs' struggle to care for his best friend, "Pighead", while trying desperately not to care too much for his HIV+ friend, for fear of losing him to the disease.

Augusten Burroughs is a very gifted storyteller. This soul-baring tale of overcoming fear (in all of its insipid forms) and bravely living life stripped naked of chemical comforts is a great story. I look forward to reading more of his work.