-"You Better Not Cry" (St. Martin's Press, 206 pages, $22), by Augusten Burroughs: Even among high-functioning alcoholics, Augusten Burroughs is an acquired taste.
But for those who like their holiday spirit with gallons of vodka and a heaping portion of irreverence, "You Better Not Cry" is at times a laugh-out-loud read.
The seven short stories in the collection all share a Christmas theme. Some take readers to familiar terrain — Burroughs' childhood, so vividly captured in his debut memoir "Running with Scissors" — while others give us a glimpse of his adult life as a best-selling, middle-aged writer living with his partner in western Massachusetts.
Burroughs is as frank and revealing as ever. We get a peak at The Guy List, short nicknames for every man the author slept with since moving to Manhattan ("Head too Small," "Jay Leno Mouth," "Egyptian Hunk Doc"). And we find out how he ended up incapacitated in a New York hotel room while a French Santa rubbed hair conditioner on his back.
But we also get a pair of tender stories to end the book. "The Best and Only Everything" recounts "our first Christmas as a family. Me, George, and our tiny new virus, AIDS," while "Silent Night" relates how Burroughs discovers the spirit of the season even when his dream house is flooded by a leaky faucet.
Burroughs fans won't be disappointed by "You Better Not Cry" and readers discovering him for the first time may be well-served by these bite-sized stories before moving on to his novels.
