Reading improves your proficiency at reading, which is a useful skill in and of itself. However, I don’t think you should read books just to “improve yourself”; I think you should do it because it’s fun and it’s something you enjoy doing.

Use a page marker, I use my bookmark at times where I'm struggling to focus.

Set the bookmark sideways to show only the first line and move it down 1 line after you finish it. Rinse and repeat. This way you can't jump to the end.

Any form of reading requires you to exercise your imagination and use your brain, which is beneficial.

I've always thought that I got through school with fairly okay grades not because I have some innate talent but because I've always love to read, and I've always been partial to fantasy and science fiction as well as horror, even through this day. Reading, in my opinion, is very good for comprehension.

I don't read, fiction anyway, to be taught. I read to be entertained, and that's what matters to me.

Honestly, as someone who HAS experienced severe trauma, I’d say a lot of people have different experience with memory: inability to remember BECAUSE of trauma. Some remember every moment in detail, some don’t remember ANYTHING.

While I distinctly remember several specific moments of my childhood and could write a very interesting memoir if I chose to, I would say a lot of the details of my story would be fabricated due to lack of memory.

Not to say Augusten Burroughs made it up or didn’t, as I can’t know for sure, but just putting it out there as someone with severe trauma: it’s possible he doesn’t remember and it’s also possible he remembers DISTINCTLY.

I’m currently reading Blood Meridian which has a good amount of spanish. I have decided I will only read his books on kindle from here on out so I can easily translate. I even get tired of that so I cannot imagine doing it manually, I honestly probably wouldn’t finish the book lol

I don’t know, but the album is great!

yes, every book. It expands your vocabulary, grammar and written/comprehension skills...not to mention works your imagination and creativity! my kids have been reading since they were little and read above their age level. Now in their teens, their essays are top notch and I really do think that it's because of how much they read.

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Cause Americans think the universe revolves around them

I have worked in mental health and grew up in a fucked up family and have talked to friends and I believe it is all true, with only the slightest of exaggerations for “comedic” effect.

I think Myshkin1981's criticism is valid. Vuong focuses too much on trying to create "profound" prose and not enough on a cohesive narrative so the end result is a fragmented collected of meandering phrases. I think this is the poet in him not translating for long form well.

To me, it comes off as a shallow person trying write intellectual & deep prose but it's immature, tedious, and yes, cringe. There were just too many obvious and bad metaphors.

I am really surprised so many people like this book, one of the worst books I've read in recent years.

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You can Google it. The family spoke up when the book came out. I believe they won a defamation lawsuit. It is at best an exaggeration. I don't think it's even classified as a memoir at this point.

Why does it matter if it was real or not? Has absolutely no bearing on my enjoyment of the story

Oh, yeah, I can’t imagine you’ll find many people who think there wasn’t any embellishment at all. I believe the real Finch family sued over some of the content, although it was eventually settled out of court and an acknowledgement added that implies it is at least a biased account.

I thought that book was the absolute worst

Keep in mind that Augusten himself acknowledges in some of his other books that he can be an unreliable narrator- in his memoir Dry there are certainly remembered experiences that likely did not happen in the way he recalls, but that’s kind of the point, IMO. These are his experiences dealing with trauma, getting sober…A Wolf at the Table, which deals more with his childhood prior to Running With Scissors, is probably something you would be interested in reading.

I actually read about a study on reading where eye-tracking technology showed that people reading news and social media online tended to read the first sentence of a paragraph and then skip to the last one, while readers of print books and print newspapers did that significantly less often. Correlation != causation, but it's interesting.

Almost all science fiction takes something we know about the universe and then expands or extends it down a ‘logical’ path - like nanobots, space travel, robotics and AI. A lot of the time they will start with a general premise, like telekinesis or other psychic abilities and go ‘but what if that were real… or could be developed’.

It’s pretty much all about mankind using our imagination to expand our understanding of the universe, and how that might shape our thinking and behavior.

Fantasy tends to be similar, except the ‘what if’s’ are about how the world might be different if some form of magic was real, whether it be creatures, supernatural forces, or different realities where the laws of physics are more guidelines than laws.

Both types of literature ask us to suspend our disbelief and consider the world from a different perspective. I think both have a lot of value in that they help us to look at things with fresh eyes, and in a lot of cases, realize that we may have more in common with the rest of humanity and nature than there are differences.

As an example, I know for me personally, it’s always helped me to see how ridiculous the idea that people are different ‘races’ and how to isolate and overcome any personal bias or prejudices I might have otherwise had.

Read the book out loud and don't rush, read at the books pace. It's the same advice I give to students with this habit.

Welcome :)

I think that is something you are going to have to answer for yourself. It could be a combination of internalized misogyny and poor writing of female characters. If you can't connect with them in some way, that makes it harder to like them.

Personally, I when I was younger I was definitely a tomboy and considered my more masculine qualities to be better than my feminine ones. At times in my life that's changed and, now that I think of it, I enjoyed those times of embracing my feminine side. Maybe you have a strong masculine side to your personality that you are more comfortable with. It's ok, but just keep in mind that you should still give female protagonists a chance in the future. You may not feel like this forever.

This book was given to me by a mentor. He said it would make me feel less "weird" because of my upbringing and trauma. My opinion is that he probably had to fill in gaps, but the story he tells at its core is real and really happened. We had weirdly similarities experiences.

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