I've wanted to read this book for sometime simply because of the title. I mean, who can't identify with that?

I enjoyed all of it, even though I keep saying I hate memoirs. This one was quite well done - honest, but never self-aggrandizing, never cruel or bitter, and seemed rather insightful. It was rather like a cross between Oliver Sacks and Jeannette Walls.

Recommended to anyone who enjoys memoirs or is interested in psychology or psychiatry. Or, of course, has a crazy family. ( )

Edward doesn’t leap out of the pages of the book and do anything violent and exciting or whatever, but I think his book shows that he has a great deal of openness to experience. (He’s a good person.) In his personal life, both as a child and as an adult, and in his school and work lives, he shows kindness and openness to experience instead of I don’t know, shutting off or trying to turn people off, you know. There are a lot of examples you could find; Edward just doesn’t snap at people or tell people they’re worthless, and it doesn’t mean he’s stupid or weak or has no boundaries. Maybe the most cool thing for me is his openness to God; he never tells people that God is bad whatever’s, and actually draws encouragement from being part of a church despite not being a ‘churchy’ person—my way is the best and only way!—and in fact, he doesn’t really talk about it that much or in any kind of dominating way…. It’s nice because obviously one of the ways to be famous or whatever is to be the atheist closed off to God and experiencing God, but he’s open to experiencing God, despite not being that ‘churchy’ person, which is clearly another way to throw your weight around with family and friends.

I guess in the end openness to experience, like an open (ajar) door, is defined largely by what it is not, and yet is clearly a good thing. Edward isn’t a big literary name, (despite having read many of those people), and this is not a hard science book or even a how-to manual (although he IS a doctor, this is a memoir), or, again, any kind of technically religious or philosophical book, although he’s open to experiencing the closeness of both God and his neighbor.