Rating: 
Summary: A Disappointing Follow-Up to Running with Scissors
Review: Fans of Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors might want to think twice before purchasing this shallow, cliche-ridden, overly novelistic recovery memoir. It lacks nearly every quality that made Running with Scissors such a funny and life-affirming read.
Rating: 
Summary: Fresh and inventive book
Review: This is an honest and hilarious book about recovery. It is insightful, painful, and I was very overwhelmed while reading it. I would say that this book is not like the other books on this subject. I truly enjoyed it very much. Burroughs gives us a sincere look at his life, and his style of writing is great.
Rating:
Summary: Another Inspiring Chapter
Review: When Augusten Burroughs published his childhood memoir, Running With Scissors, he took the world by storm with his wit, cynicsm and dry humour. Now, Burroughs takes us into yet another dark chapter of his life, his twenties, the greater part of which he spent drunk and high on cocaine. Burroughs bares his heart and soul on the page; he keeps nothing hidden from his reader. And that's exactly what makes this autobiography stand above the rest. Burroughs is so brutally honest that you don't always end up liking him. As a matter of fact, he often seems very shallow and arrogant on the page. And yet, even with all his flaws, you also end up caring for Burroughs a lot. The novel starts when Burroughs is told by his employer (he's a an advertising editor) that he needs to go to rehab or he loses his job. There, he befriends a group of strange characters that will help him through his hard time. When he is finally released from rehab, he isn't fully ready for what is waiting for him on the other side: the real world. For starters, his best friend is HIV positive and slowly dying. Secondly, he falls in love with a man who is still an addict and who's life is just one big mess. And then, there's the temptation, which is always present, always threatening. But don't be fooled. The book isn't as dark as it appears to be on the surface because you know, after having read his previous biography, that Burroughs has a strong character and that he'll somehow find a way through this all. And the fact that he uses humour to alleviate the dark moments helps make this one very fascinating and involving read. This is what a biography should be like; funny, touching, inspiring. It is beautifully written and lives up to the standards of the amazing Running With Scissors, something that isn't easy to do(it was one of the best memoirs I have ever read). Dry is a one of a kind memoir that will stay with you for a long time. Not to be missed! It will surely be one of the best book of the year.
Rating:
Summary: Bizarre and uproarious
Review: If there's one thing Augusten Burroughs thrives at, it's survival. In last year's dynamic reminiscence Running with Scissors, he detailed a spectacularly [messed]-up childhood, rife with insanity, anarchy, and a paedophilic relationship (condoned by his manic-depressive mother) with a man twenty years his senior. It was harrowing, grotesque, and obscene. It was also hilarious, devoid of self-pity, and often brilliant. Finally escaping the madness, Burroughs appears to adjust to 'normal' life rather well. As his newest memoir Dry begins, he has reinvented himself as a "vain and shallow," single, gay, New York ad executive pulling down six figures. As a sidenote, he is a two-fisted drunk, "foul, dark and ugly," polishing off a litre of Dewars a night, plus cocktails, plus fifteen Benadryl pills a day to combat his allergy to alcohol. However, he denies that a problem exists, viewing himself rather as an eccentric, "somebody who mixes stripes with plaids, somebody who laughs too loudly in restaurants." Forced to enter a rehabilitation program, Burroughs enrolls in the Proud Institute, a detox centre catering exclusively to homosexual clientele. Imagining a pristine compound complete with good music, crisp linens, and carafes of water with lemon wedges, he finds instead (in Duluth, Minnesota) a harsh dose of realism amidst a factory neighbourhood. As the factuality of his situation sinks in, he tries desperately to elevate himself over his fellow self-destructive addicts. "I don't belong here. I make over two hundred thousand dollars a year . . . The CEO of Coca-Cola once complimented my tie." Unlike the blazing dementia of Running with Scissors, Dry traverses more familiar terrain, the stuff of maudlin television dramas and celebrity biographies. Yet Burroughs, dry in both body and wit, crafts a tale that resonates more fully because of its familiarity. There is a certain amount of agonizingly honest navel-gazing (as befits the scenario), but he never allows himself to lapse into sentimentality. Burroughs is smart enough to realize that he is both hero and villain, never painting himself as becoming ennobled through his battle. Enraptured with liquor, he forsakes everything for the bottle, ignoring the distress of co-workers and confidants, and leaving his best friend Pighead to suffer the devastation of AIDS alone. A viciously sardonic attitude pervades much Dry, akin to the blistering satire of support groups found in Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. Burroughs comprehends and appreciates the fount of black comedy and dark parody that pervades the recovery process, a routine abounding with AA meetings, group therapy, and bottomless mugs of coffee. Burroughs is also not afraid to delve into the darkest corners of addiction. At moments, the lure of relapse exerting itself, Dry resembles the bleakest passages of John O'Brien's Leaving Las Vegas, nakedly exposing the fallacy that alcoholism can somehow be utterly 'defeated.' Dry is not meant as a guidebook for a successful transition into sobriety. It is the story of Burroughs, a funny, sad individual who manages to find humour in despair, dark though it may be. His story, alternately bizarre and uproarious, is a story everyone will understand.
Rating:
Summary: Best Ever!
Review: Could not put this book down. Also read "Runnning with Scissors" and loved it. Screamed in the bookstore when I saw "Dry" was there and I would have it take on my vacation. Read for 18 hours straight then spaced it out to not finish it too quickly. (Did not want to live without Augusten in my life!) Every line made me either laugh out loud or want to memorize it to use later to perfectly describe something. After reading, I feel like I have been an alcoholic, been to rehab, relapsed (cried when Augusten did) and got sober again. This is an absolutley "must read" and will be read by me over and over again until he writes another!
Rating:
Summary: Another great book from Augusten Burroughs
Review: I work in a small bookstore and read Dry during the slow hours in the evening, and really loved it, as I did his earlier memoir Running with Scissors. Dry is very funny, and to sound like a cliche, moving too.
He really has a way of putting words together, and I love his simple, direct sentences. Sometimes three words and a period had me lauging out loud.
In some circles memoirs have bad reputations as somehow being less than real literature, and there are probably enough recovery memoirs out there to satisify any self-help junkie, but Mr. Burrough gives us something fresh, inventive and literate.
He poses questions that all of us have to face at one time or another: how can I live a life full of pain and grief without a crutch to hold me up? More importantly, how do I get rid of the crutch after I've grown to depend on it for every step.
And in his case, he had to try and recover with someone literally trying to sabatoge his efforts.
Anoyone able to face and beat alcoholism deserves strong praise. But someone that can beat it, and write such an honest and hilarious book deserves a medal.
Rating:
Summary: Wow! And wow again!
Review: I saw this in TIME magazine and bought it because i have some certain concerns about a person I love very much who I think has a struggle with alcoholism. but I endded up reading it myself! I don't think I've ever even heard of a "funny" book about recovery. But this was also really insightful and honest and painful and I'm very impressed! It is a book that I would say is incredible and not like the other books on this topic that I have read before. I would have to highly reccomend it to anybody who has an addiction or who knows somebody who does or even just somebody who loves a great read! I am going to get the authors other book, Running With Scissors, next because I've heard very positive things about that too.
Rating:
Summary: A memoir indeed
Review: One of the effects of alcholism is poor memory. "Dry" proves this if nothing else. Augusten's disease impacted more lives negatively than he knows and has chosen to ignore facts. This book is fiction so do not fooled by the titled. Even his name
is an illusion. Keep this in mind as you turn the pages that the truth is somewhere outside the cover.
Rating: 
Summary: A Sobering Look At Sobriety
Review: Augusten Burroughs showed how funny dysfunction could be in the excellent biography "Running With Scissors". Anyone who read (and enjoyed) "Running" can't be suprised that the next step for Burroughs would be rehab, which is the core of his new book "Dry".
The cast surrounding Burroughs in this novel comes with its own set of baggage, which gives him new avenues to explore, new failures to ridicule and new situations to extract both humor and pathos. Again, Burroughs makes laughing at his own missteps central to the book's theme, allthough a running second story involving a best friend who is dying of AIDS really turns the reader against Burroughs (until the necessary near-book's end epiphany, which always seems to be a common theme in alcohol-recovery stories).
Burroughs makes a funny, and tragic drunk. His confusion over dates and times, his lying and deceiving friends and co-workers lead to some laugh-out-loud tales. And the long overdue intervention will make a great movie scene someday. But this book hits its stride with Burroughs exiting rehab, and trying to cope in the real world without a drink. Here his yearning for understanding of his own condition, set against a number of incidents (his friend's eventual death, scripting a beer advertising campaign) lead to humor, sadness and understanding, and show us the heart and soul that we suspect is there, but are rarely given a chance to see until the end of the story.
Anyone who has experience with sobriety, or with twelve-step programs will especially enjoy Burrough's experiences in rehab and meetings, but there may be a few too many in-jokes for those not familiar with a sober lifestyle.
Rating:
Summary: What Hunter S Thompson might have been....
Review: ....had he gone through rehab and been brought up with an electroshock machine in his guardian's home, as did Augusten Burroughs, arguably one of the freshest and most exquisite humorists to grace our country post-2000. DRY is a memorable and searing romp - but without the fluff. buckle your seatbealts, it's going to be a bumpy ride -- but oh so worth it. no false trendiness here -- DRY is unlike any other recovery book out there..almost incredibly honest and dips from that dark humor into genuine grief and then, thank goodness, a sort of redemptive ending that doesn;t seem at all unlikely or forced. This is not a strictly urban read, it should resonate with any reader who has struggled with addictive tendencies, personal demons, or an unexpected U turn in the road of fortune. The sort of book that restores the spirit without the slightest bit of treacle, cliche, or predictability. Uncommonly good.
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