Running With Creeps

I don't want to come off as someone who watches t.v. around-the-clock, but you know it must be Summer hiatus time, if I suddenly find myself reading a lot. I did enjoy watching ABC's Dancing With The Stars, but now that it is over, I have not found myself turning the t.v. on at night, if I happen to be home. The only exception being if I am watching one of my dvds from Netflix that I recieve regularly. Of course, I must remind folks that I do not have cable!

Among the books that I have recently completed reading are Amanda Filipacchi's Love Creeps, and Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors, A Memoir. Both books, though completely different, were wonderful, fun reading and contained the craziest, most outrageous protagonists you will ever find in any pages. What is incredible about the books' similarities is that one is a novel, the other a memoir; yet they both are about complex, fucked-up people who experience the most unbelievable situations, and persevere them.
Briefly, Love Creeps follows a successful Manhattan gallerist, who suddenly loses her passion for everything in life, including her work. She then finds herself being stalked by this man and sees that this man loves stalking her...with a passion. So she decides that she will too stalk someone as well, to see if this reawakens her passions. It sounds simple and crazy but what follows are the most hysterical and ridiculous situations and role-playing I have ever read in any pages. Filipacchi treats the delicate subject of stalking with wit, light-heartedness, and irony.
Those who have known me for along time, should know that I have loved this woman's work since 1993, when she came out with the novel, Nude Men. She has one other novel called Vapor. All of these titles can be found in my library at home.
Running With Scissors is the true life account experienced by the author, whom at age 12, found his mother sending him to live with her therapist and his crazy family so she can work on her traumas and write poetry. At the doctor's home, young Augusten is freaked out by the chaos and utter mess he sees everywhere. But he quickly adjusts, by befriending the doctor's teenage, free-thinking, dope-smoking daughters and a pedophile patient who lives in the back. This is one of the most tragic and humorous memoirs I have ever read. That the author lived to tell the story is simply fascinating to me.

I am now reading Jose Saramago's The Double. I will tell you all what I think of it once I complete it.