This is the story of Koren Zailkas who "fell in love" with binge drinking at the age of 14 and quit drinking at age 23. She wrote the book to reclaim the youth that she lost.

I don't usually like "recovery" books. There is not a lot of enjoyment for me in reading about people suffering and then getting better. I didn't read A Million Little Pieces even though people keep telling me to. I do have Dry on my personal summer reading pile. I do remember being really moved by The Late Great Me when I was in high school, but it is kind of dated now. Speaking of dated, Go Ask Alice is still really popular, even though it uses all kind of really dated language and seems kind of "scary on purpose".

I like memoirs, though. Funny ones. A Girl Named Zippy is my all time favorite. I also love Me Talk Pretty One Day and anything by Laurie Notaro.

There is a swirl of controversy lately about how true a memoir has to be because of James Frey, and David Sedaris is caught up in it too. It makes for interesting discussion.

Of course the point of this book is that binge drinking harms young women in all sorts of ways. Which is a good thing to remember.