"Where would we be without our painful childhoods?" - Dr Finch, "Running with Scissors"

Why did I pick up Running with Scissors? Somebody's reading it – someone in the blogosphere- can’t recall who – and so at work on Saturday, I went downstairs and picked up a copy and took it home.
Dudes – it’s WILDLY entertaining.
Every single time you think it can’t possibly get more outrageous – it does.
It’s twisted and odd and downright insane, but hilarious.
And I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone believed this was true.
I am sure parts of it are; I am sure much of this stuff happened in some form.
But did Burroughs colorfully embellish and detail and embroider? Oh yeah.
Definitely.
He does it so well, I don’t even care, though.
It’s the most entertaining book I have read in a very long time.

At the other end of the spectrum, I began The Map of Love.
It’s gorgeous – dense, fractured prose; emotionally tormented and heartbroken characters; cross-cultural love affairs, all wrapped up in Middle Eastern mystique.
It’s not the sort of book you sit down with for ten minutes at a clip though – its reading requires some work, some serious concentration. I look forward to next having a chunk of time to keep going with it.

But it won’t be tomorrow. Tomorrow I have to bake a pineapple walnut cake and then take said cake to a Labor Day picnic at which fifty people – almost half of them children – are expected. I am looking forward to the gathering but relaxing it will NOT be. Just keeping The Baby out of the fish pond ought to be an adventure.