Today on Omnivoracious, we're delighted to launch a month-long weekly advice column by Augusten Burroughs, who makes his move from memoirist to self-help strategist with This Is How (available May 8). He starts by answering a frustrated plea from a mom whose husband's foot-dragging makes the whole family cranky. Then he digs into the deeper reasons a "well known, happy, funny, kind, 25 year old" may have been dumped by their best friend.
My husband, the father of our two teenaged sons, works from home as a project manager for a large international corporation. During any given day, our lives will require that someone make a foray out of the house for band practice, food, lessons, doctors appointments, etc. Most of our outings are appointments where we are paying someone money for an actual unit of their time to be dispensed at an agreed up time.
This is the problem. My husband many, maybe even most times, in full knowledge of the rapidly looming time commitment, fires up a phone call, starts an email, sits down for a long personal moment in the bathroom. The rest of us are left seething until he presents himself ready to go. We now leave at the last possible minute, all cranky and out of sorts. If cars and traffic and every other variable aren't perfect, my husband's choices have left us NO wiggle room.
It's simply awful. I have tried to talk to him about it just because it angers me, but also because I don't think it sets the greatest example for our teens. Just the miasma of furor and unsaid words is poor parenting, I think.
What do we do? He has to be involved—so we need a way to get through to him. It's enough to drive me back to drink, which is a country I'm not welcome in any longer. Help. -- Cate
Dear Cate,
I wish I knew even more. Does your husband’s differing degree of respect for punctuality result in real-world problems? Do you end up being late frequently and missing scheduled appointments you’ve already paid for? Or do you pretty much always make it, but it was just so close you aged like a month from the stress of it?
If the answer is the former, I have more questions. Is your relationship healthy and strong and good in other areas? If you’re talking to him about this, that at least tells me the two of you do communicate to some degree, right? Because if you and your husband are a good pair and the family is working, this might be like when you buy something you truly, deeply love at the store and when you get home, you realize there are extra hidden costs: it doesn’t come with batteries, you need a subscription, you can’t wear it until you have electrolysis, whatever. And as annoying as this can be, if you’re otherwise happy, sometimes you just have to fork over the extra.
It could also be that you and your husband are equally matc
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By: Annie Beth Ericsson,
on 9/7/2010
Blog: Walking In Public (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: curtis sittenfeld, prep, catching fire, stieg larsson, augusten burroughs, mockingjay, now reading, jonathan tropper, running with scissors, this is where I leave you, girl with the dragon tattoo, girl who played with fire, book reviews, summer, grown-up books, reading list, hunger games, Add a tag
As with exercise regimens and New Year’s resolutions, summer reading lists are those kind of goals that, despite the best of intentions, never seem to get finished. Still, I’m pretty jazzed about the amount of reading I’ve managed on the subway and at lunch, and I forgive myself for not getting to the rest of the list – I had two trilogies to attend to!
I realize that I never expressed my post-reading feelings about some of these titles, so here’s a round up of the books I promised I’d read, and actually did!
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo AND The Girl Who Played With Fire – Stieg Larsson /
Murder mysteries aren’t exactly my thing, but I can see why this trilogy has so much buzz. If you can get through the first 250+ pages of exposition and keep up with the host of Swedish names, Larsson’s first book is a truly engrossing thriller, and the sequel takes it right on par from there.
I’m not sure why Dragon Tattoo, and especially detective/journalist/man-about-town Mikael Blomkvist, would be considered feminist in the least, as pointed out by The Rejectionist in this deliciously seething review. Blomkvist is exactly the man who male fiction writers like to fantasize they are (see Robert Langdon), and he spends way too much time being a lady-magnet in tweed to actually be a believable character. Salander, on the other hand, may be seriously screwy, but at least she is interesting.
I also agree that reading or watching highly disturbing scenes of rape and torture is not my idea of a good time (really, I only watch Law and Order SVU for Chris Meloni and Ice-T). I could stomach parts of the no-holds-barred Swedish film with the sound off, and reading those gruesome scenes left me needing some Glee songs and a cupcake.
That being said, take Stieg Larsson’s trilogy for what it is – crime fiction – not some icon of feminist literature. Maybe, like me, you don’t only read characters who hold to real-life moral standards (if that’s the case, knock yourself out with Left Behind, please). Get lost in Larsson’s cold, cold Scandinavian underworld… then come up for air and find something happy to do.
This Is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper /
Several months after hearing Tropper speak and praising the cover design, I finally, finally read This Is Where I Leave You… and found a voice that I wasn’t exactly prepared for. Sure, the dark comedic elements were impeccably timed, as expected. But Tropper’s protagonist, Judd Foxman, also left me with a perspective on the middle-aged male