Book #1 The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon
I was just a few pages away from finishing “A Year Of Magical Thinking” when I decided that I would read another book instead so I wouldn’t start the year on such a sad literary note. Thus, I picked up “The Burn Journals” because nothing is more happy and more of a great foot to start a year out on than the detailing of a young man who tried to commit suicide by setting himself on fire.
The disconcerting thing about this book is that I related so much to the author. We were born in the same year, and so many of the events and people that seemed to bookmark his childhood were familiar. Also, I had the same unsettling way of solving my problems. No, I never decided to make myself a one woman bonfire, but I did set rather harsh consequences on typical juvenile actions. The only difference is that he kept escalating his personal punishments to his actions as they became more serious and likely to get him into even more trouble. Whereas I just realized that I had to make no more mistakes to stay alive so I didn’t really allow myself to screw up, be disobedient, or really even live normally until I managed a better way of coping with making mistakes.
Another note, I rather like the cover of the book that I have featured with this entry, but it was not the one of the edition I read. The one I read has cover art which looks as if it was drawn by someone who had received burns on their hands. *shudders*
