Book #2 The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon

The Burn Journals
By Brent Runyon
Published by Random House Children's Books, 2004
ISBN 0375826211, 9780375826214
384 pages

I'm feeling good about this challenge. I'm a day ahead of schedule and still excited. I've just got to keep this momentum going for eighty-eight more days and twenty-eight books.

I really wanted to read The Burn Journals, Then I heard Brent Runyon read the first chapter on This American life's Podcast (episode #209: Didn't Ask to Be Born) a few weeks ago, and I was sold. However so was most of Portland, and the book had over 300 holds on 5 copies in the library system. The memoir of a suicidal eighth grade boy who set himself on fire = Stumptown Blockbuster. After a few weeks wait, the library hold notice popped into my inbox the day before I started this challenge. Great timing right?

I can't remember the last time I read a book that felt so much like listening in on someones thoughts. The story read like the stream of consciousness, mean, awful thoughts followed by regrets and self-reprimands for thinking that way to begin with. The book is unapologetic and blunt.

What bothers me about this book is that by the end, I still feel like Brent won't take responsibility for his actions, won't own up to the mistakes he made. He just wants everyone to forget that he locked himself in his bathroom and lit himself on fire. All the while, with all the therapy he can't actually say the words, he just relies on his family to see it in his eyes. It's a book - I can't see his eyes. He comes off as an entitled jerk, sidestepping what he's put his family through and what they gave up for him.

I don't feel sorry for him, I want to smack him in the back of the head. I know he suffered and depression makes people do stupid things, but he keeps insisting in the book he's better now, but I don't buy it. I have a feeling when he wrote this, Brent Runyon didn't want anyone to feel sorry for him or respect him much. The book makes it seem like he wants to share what it was like in his head, and that I can respect.

Three out of four stars.