25 May 2012

Reading Augusten Burroughs’ new book reminded me that he was pulled up for fibbing in Running With Scissors by the family his mother ‘gave him to’ at age 12 or 14 (can’t quite recall).

I think he had to call it a book rather than a memoir but it did not hurt his success.

His book, A Wolf at the Table, about his monster of a father.

The part about Ernie the hamster was especially awful.

Augusten’s father was not around to contest the content.

Recently I tried to read his mother’s autobiography but found it boring despite some awful things.

That is very strange, to not care about an individual’s bad experiences because of the way they write about them!

Speed read a book (The Lost Girl by Caroline Roberts) at the library yesterday by a girl who had been abducted twice by Fred and Rosemary West. Twice!

And she got away alive but also badly abused.

Caroline had a horrendous life besides all that but I glossed over that too!

Something about the style was annoying. She had a writer to help her too.

19 May 2012

Have noticed that people who are vanity or self-/e-publishing are charging quite a lot more than similar books are on Amazon!

Many people on Amazon are selling books for as little as one dollar (plus shipping); of course, there is no shipping with Kindle once buyers have purchased their Kindle.

Recently I had found that some doubt was expressed over Frank McCourt’s book Angela’s Ashes.

However, even if those dodgy bits were omitted there was still plenty of horror left.

BUT, just finished Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan.

I had read Sybil years ago and accepted it as fact.

However, I did find it odd how detailed the parts were when Sybil was living as one of her many ‘others’.

It was the detail; how could she remember all that as herself?

Seems the whole think was cooked up as a money-making scheme by all three of the women involved: Sybil Dorsett/Shirley Mason, Dr Cornelia Wilbur and Flora Rheta Schreiber (the author).

Even though Flora did lots of checking into Sybil’s background and felt no corroboration at all, she went ahead as Dr Wilbur played her tapes that were made when Sybil was under the influence of Pentathol but the author was not told that. Wilbur actually states that Sybil and her mother most likely suffered from pernicious anaemia which has some odd symptoms to explain a few things about Sybil’s behaviour.

Sybil/Shirley became addicted to the drug and Dr Wilbur who broached the patient/therapist code in multiple ways.

Shirley was just a lonely girl with older parents who died and when left on her own easily succumbed to Dr Wilbur’s ‘charms’.

At least the truth is out now but not before 100s of people started saying they had multiple personalities too – some up to 400 in at least one case!

A lot of harm was caused by people supposedly retrieving traumatic memories about parental abuse that never occurred.

Some parents are still in jail I understand.