And the cover is gorgeous!

If you're a comment-reading person, you ought to know that my friend Slowplum was true to her word. She brought me some peppermint bath salts. She labelled the container "Bath Candy" and Middle Child confessed that he took a piece. "That was the worst candy I've ever tasted!"

She also lent me a book: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.

I devoured it in the course of an evening and into the night, getting into bed at 2.

The book is a memoir of Frey's experiences in rehab (Hazeldon, I would deduce). It was gut-cringing, eye-blinding and even foul-smelling. The guy must have sat down at his computer and just let it flow. You can tell it's coming from a deep, dark place of the soul.

Unlike William S. Burroughs accounts of his drug-soaked past, or that 60s era diary-esque Go Ask Alice which was required reading when I was a girl, I don't think Frey intended to scare or to gross anyone out. His account of the pain he endured getting caps and root canal without anethesia was detailed enough to put you in the chair with him but not with a mirror as well. The part of him pulling out his toenail, on the other hand, I'd rather not discuss. I'm someone who can stand the sight, sound, and smell of vomit, but that was when I put the book down and got myself a glass of water.

Being a stickler for punctuation, however, I was distracted by his complete disregard for quotation marks, commas and question marks. Ditto the freedom to capitalize just about anything (someone's House, they had Kids, my Room, the Dealer). But then again, I don't think James Joyce really got away with it either.

However, I really enjoyed it. I just went to look online to find out more about the author; see what else he has written about. Well, wouldn't you know it, it was chosen for Oprah's Book Club. Yeah, I could just see someone like Husband's suburban aunt reading about vomiting up chunks of stomach.