It's a self-help book all right, though I've never read a self help book before - nor have I ever wanted to. I only did because I got a discount on the hardcopy at Schulers and the event coordinater recommended it. She and I seemed to have similar taste in books. Also, Augusten is one of my favorite writers.

His usual humor but there's some amazing wisdom in this book. I've dog-eared so many pages already and I'm only half way thru:

LIKE:

On confidence:


... confidence is not the presence of anything at all. Confidence is a reduction of your own interest in whether others are thinking about you and if so, what they're thinking.

Put another way, to be more confident you need to give a whole lot less of a shit about what other people think of you.

Confidence is not something you feel or possess; its something others use to describe what they see when they look at you.

*

When you say, "I need more confidence," what you're really saying is, "I need those people over there to approve of me."

That is the desire to control other people and what they think. The first person who figures out how to do this owns the world. 



There are real moments of profundity like this, throughout the book - mixed in with humorous antecdotes and his trademark wit. I've always thought him an amazing writer, but this is unexpeted, yet very interesting. Also an easy read.

Last edited by Jeni Decker (06-22-2012 20:06:43)