Dry- By Augusten Burroughs

I devoured this book. It was just shy of 300 pages, and I read it throughout the course of a day (plus 2 hours of night shift). I did get through it in that span because I had a lazy day off to kill. It was a Monday, and I worked two jobs that day. I also craved the life of Augusten Burroughs.

"When I was thirteen, my crazy mother gave me away to her lunatic psychiatrist, who adopted me. I then lived a life of squalor, pedophiles, no school and free pills. When I finally escaped, I presented myself to advertising agencies as a self-educated, slightly eccentric youth, filled with passion, bursting with ideas. I left out the fact that I didn't know how to spell or that I had been giving blow jobs since I was thirteen." - page 2 (By page two, I learned that Augusten Burroughs doesn't bullshit.)

Honestly, reading his relived memories made me feel neurotic. I put the book down for a breather, and realized my eyes were swimming with extremely detailed observations about the setting around me, which happened to be in my car on the freeway and I had no idea how I got there because last I remembered, I was sitting in bed reading. Adopting his perspective disconnected my dots. Not entirely unpleasant, but definitely weird. And addictive, which is the word of the day, while reading Dry. It took me about eight o'clock his time, six martinis in, to figure out he was an overt alcoholic, which is subsequently why it's called Dry.

Slouching in a chair six hours later, I suddenly become aware that I'm at work. I'm trying not to be painfully aware of a fistfull of observations all at once. Each blotchy, faded stain on this worn blue/black/brown/grey carpet looks like year-old puke that someone tried to wipe away after vomiting up; the chipper but screeching voice coming over the intercom scratches the inner membranes of my ears; behind the almost one-way glass window, every person who walks by looks like the same person on loop; the other person slouching in his chair behind the counter next to me hasn't said a word in the last four hours and I also don't think he's moved from the same elbow-on-thigh position; I also haven't spoken or moved in the same amount of time except for page turns; this book I'm reading is pretty intense; before I dive back into it.

I get like this. I get involved. My thoughts fall in sync with the person I'm reading. His neurosis fill my senses to the brim. I'm aware of my tendency to fall deeply in love with my narrator. Steadily and compulsively, I read on, absorbing the details of his shambled life, listening to his confessions as if I had been for years. Whenever I set him down, dog-eared, it's with a promise to return as soon as I can. Like he can trust me. Likewise, every page is scrolled over with precise, completely intimate and honest facts about his life, childhood, temptations, addictions, and anxiety. He's funny in the face of harsh realities, like HIV, alcoholism, rehab, and rock bottom. His laughter shines through the pain of life, always ever hopeful.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaimen

I couldn't wait for my day off... because i was going to spend it in a sunny spot on the couch with Neil Gaimen's new book and a sleepy kitty. I don't think there could have been a better way to read The Ocean at the End of the Lane than with my feet up, kitten in my lap, and the sun on my face. I felt like I was sitting right next to the man on the bench in the sun as he recalled and relayed in detail the strange incidents that occurred to him as a boy.

Coming back home, seeing the house, and then the water made him remember, one word at a time... as if a curtain was being slowly lifted from his eyes. And in remembering, came wonder.

I listened to him speak as I pet the kitten. His story was humorous and heartfelt, and woven with anecdotes from his childhood. The seven-year-old triumphs and heartaches were familiar to me. Then came the magic. It happened slowly at first, and then flooded the story. Sometimes disbelief flashed in my mind, but it always softened into awe at the impossibly marvelous accounts he revealed. Without judgement, I listened, the way I would listen to a child. I accepted what I knew to be illogical bending of reality, simply because, even if it didn't quite make sense, I want to hear more. Captivated by danger, tragedy and wonder, this book held me to the end. The world I was immersed in so closely resembled this one that most people would not notice the way the cat winked or her dress flapped like an empty canvas even though there was no wind. Something a child would point out and an adult would disregard. But if you look closer and chose to question appearances, a door might open. And that door may be a tunnel that lets you out into a new, fantastic world.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane deserves all five stars, for being an honest account of the way marvelous things would happen if they did. Gaimen's imagination is so believable that his story simply slips into our memory of the past during reminiscence. As the narrative began winding down, and I was closing in on the last few pages, the thin film of reality began to splinter and bleed through with magic of every color. Red warning flags flew before my eyes and I wanted to shake this man to wake him up to the truth. THE END had me wide-eyed and open-mouthed with wow. Gaimen owns his personal genre of fiction, known as magical realism.

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

The chaos of the human mind is something we've always been fascinated with. Many great works of fiction were experiments with the damaged brain after it was subjected to war trauma or some other psychological battle for survival. Herein lies a narrator who is trying desperately to tell us some key thing that happened or will happen but cannot face the actuality of it and so he rejects it and instead tell us everything else inside his warped mind, every anxiety, every random memory, in hopes that we will piece it together and maybe even save him.

Yosarian is someone i care about. He is scared. He is severely flawed, but he's the only one who seems to be honest about what's going on. He hates being a captain of war and wants nothing more than to go home. He is also trying to get laid. Rambling, paranoid, prankster, hopeless, he is all we have.

The meaning of catch 22 is found several hundred pages of dialogue in, where Yosarian and Doc Daneeka discuss "the catch". The only way to get out of flying more missions is to be declared mentally unfit to fly by the doctor. To be declared unfit however, one must request a psychological evaluation, but only a sane person would request to get out of flying more dangerous missions. The cycle of regulations spin tauntingly out of reach as the number of missions each cadet is mandated to fly before being honorably discharged steadily increases. As the invisible vice tightens, Yosarian's frantic paranoia that someone is trying to kill him actually mimics true insanity, all the while, the destinations of warfare create chaos and a mounting body count.

I must confess that the entire story, from page one, is a rising climatic suspense. Every detail is thrown at the reader, a dozen names intermixed with a dozen pagelong descriptions of each character's appearance, rank, habits, spouse, and peculiarities. Actually plot advances are unchronologically splashed with confessions, youthful memories, paranoid delusions, and fixations. With his pain that borders on euphoria, Yosarian must reach his epiphany of recollection and give the whole thing meaning. Nearing the last few chapters, I had my doubts as to whether or not he'd make it through to resolution. Overall, I'd give Catch 22 four out of five stars. I do strongly recommend reading it if you have not already. It was a challenging read, I admit, not altogether enjoyable, yet fascinating nonetheless. I withhold one star, not for the lack of it being a masterpiece or even an American classic, but in respects to the payoff at the end, the very, very end, which was remarkable but fleeting with an exasperated conclusion of utterly used up human persistence.