Book Review - This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More

This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. by Augusten Burroughs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As I read this book, I kept coming across fabulous quotations and thinking over and over again "Oh! I should put that in my review! It's perfect!" until I finally came to the conclusion that what I really needed to do was quote the book in it's entirety, because it was that stunning and lovely and sharp-witted and everyone needed to read it.

Yes, much of this book is good, old-fashioned common sense. Unfortunately, we live in a world where good, old-fashioned common sense is increasingly a rare commodity. Burroughs talks to you like you're his friend, someone going through something tough, and he doesn't pull any punches when he's telling you to get over yourself and fix the problem you have, and he knows how, cause he's been there, so he'll tell you that, too.

Much of the advice in this book is about being mindful in your life, something that helped me overcome a series of overwhelming tragedies in my own life that occured between 2007-2008. It took me a while to figure out what to do, when I could have just read this book if it'd been on the market back then.

There are also an awful lot of places where you can't help but laugh. And one place that made me cry, because Burroughs talks honestly and openly about the deep striking tragedies and difficulties that have touched his own life.

Because I can't quote the whole thing, let me leave you with a bit that touched me particularly deeply:

"This is among the oldest, deepest, most primal truths: the facts of life may be, at times, unbearably painful. But the core, the bones of life are generous beyond all reason or belief. Those things that ought to kill us do not. This should be taken as encouragement to continue.

And when the Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen is what happens, you would not believe that anywhere in your future exists one of your very happiest moments. What you would believe, and be quite certain of, is that any good days and certainly your best days were behind you now.

But believing something is true, even with all your heart, is unrelated to whether or not what you believe is true."


*Book received through Goodreads First Reads program

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