This Is How

Burroughs (Running with Scissors) playfully shares his hard-won insights in a book that is the antidote to the "just be positive" approach to life. Not a memoir, it reads more like a conversation with a close friend about truthfulness and authenticity, figuring things out and being hopeful, starting from where one is and learning to listen to oneself. Each short chapter explores a different topic: shame, despair, loss, body issues, hardship. Grounded in the understanding that life is a messy business, the book overflows with moments both wonderful and difficult. It is hard to know what to do with anger, pain, and obsession, Burroughs acknowledges, but he offers a kind of remedy: learn to live with it, to transform it, to move forward. This is about how to create a life from the circumstances of the present moment. The book has a soft ending, but readers won't mind because it's been a great ride.