It was not something that i would usually read but then this book teaches you a lot. I couldn't really relate to James because I have never been to rehab nor was I ever a junkie but still this book gives you a lot to think about.

Very recommended read. :)

If I could rate this is zero I would. This was one of the most horrible books I've ever wasted time on. I told people around me how fake this book was before thr truth ever came out. Absolutely crazy that this book is still going so strong. Frey should be ashamed of himself for trying to play this off as a memoir when it is in fact fiction. Even if he did claim it as it was it still a horribely written book. STAY AWAY!!

It's a 1/2 star only. Good Lord, what a cringey whinefest. I have a policy of reading through whatever it is that I start. But I gave up after 229 pages of incessant annoyance. Here is a sample of the remarkable writing this book is filled with -

Everything goes white and I cannot breathe. I clench my eyes and bite down on my existing teeth and I think my jaw may be breaking and I squeeze my hands and I dig my fingers through the hard rubber surface of the tennis balls and my fingernails crack and my fingernails break and my fingernails start to bleed and I curl my toes and they fucking hurt and my torso tightens and my stomach muscles feel as if they're going to collapse and my ribs feel as if they're caving in on themselves and it fucking hurts and my balls are shrinking and the shrinking fucking hurts and my dick is hard because my blood hurts and my blood wants to escape and is seeking exit through my dick and my dick fucking hurts and my arms are straining against the thick blue nylon straps and the thick blue nylon straps are cutting my flesh and it fucking hurts and my face is on fire and the veins in my neck want to explode and my brain is white and it is melting and it fucking hurts.

Do you know what is being descibed here? A frikkin ROOT CANAL. At a dentist's.

Alcohol and drug abuse is a serious topic and I give the author props to be able to write about it but unfortunately, it reads less as an insightful memoir and more as an immature, angsty, incoherent rant against anything and everything. Add to this the fact that he has fabricated incidents in order to add drama to it and you have a perplexing fictional memoir that makes you doubt its credibility. The style of writing is a terrible, terrible TERRIBLE attempt at mixing dialogues with stream of consciousness thoughts.

If I can sum it up, in the style of the book itself, I shall do it in the following manner :

The book is shit and I'm reading it. It is painful but I'm reading it. I can't go on but I'm reading it. *Insert cuss words*. It hurts my brain but I'm reading it. My IQ drops but I'm reading it. *Cuss again* And then, I fling it away. And it doesn't hurt as much. And I'm not reading it anymore.

Use A Million Little Pieces of your time constructively and go read something else.
Lovely front cover though. Very pretty.

Io non pensavo che un tossicodipendente alcolista potesse sopravvivere a quello a cui è sopravvissuto James Frey e che racconta in questo memoir.
Seriamente, è qualcosa che si tiene costantemente sul limite massimo della resistenza umana, ed è raccontato con un'onestà disarmante.
Se l'inizio - James che si ritrova su un aereo, senza denti, sanguinante e con un buco nella guancia - vi sembra estremo, aspettate di leggere il resto.
Bello bello.

it should be a law to put quotations around dialogue

4.5 but rounding down because I hate the way the women were portrayed and the teeth stuff. Still incredibly powerful with the knowledge that it’s an exaggerated account.

Gary's right about this dude. He's a bigger pumpkin fucker than Steinbeck.

The only reason that I finished this book was that I brought it with me from London and I was going around small coastal towns in the Dominican Republic offering no alternative reading material. But what a waste of 500+ pages of reading time! I cannot think of anything that Frey wants to say in this book other than: Look at how fucked-up I am. I'm not asking for your sympathy or understanding - and fuck you if you even think of pitying me. Nor am I writing to help others with similar addiction problems. As a matter of fact, I hurt those who try to help me and ridicule the methods that are used in the rehab clinics. I just want you to look at how fucked-up I am and revel in that because I'm a narcissistic asshole and I just love to talk about myself. I will lie all through the book to make myself look tough and bad-ass, and after my lies are exposed I will try to justify them by saying that I wanted my story to have ebb and flow. I will attempt to manipulate your emotions into thinking that I'm not an asshole all the time. There was this poor fucked-up crack whore in my rehab who fell for me. I will make more cheese out of that story than Wisconsin produces in a year. Of course, I have more reasons to write this book than just telling you how fucked-up I am. Buy it and make me rich. That would be nice, wouldn't it?

Large parts of this book is unbelievably mundane and boring; some are downright asinine. The only reason that this book has blown up to more than 500 pages is that Frey just loves to talk about himself. There's a story in the book about some ex-patient rock star who comes to the clinic to talk about his experience and recovery. Frey ridicules his speech as all lies and self-aggrandizing bullshit. His own book can be described in the exact same way, and I have a feeling that he knows it very well. Frey probably thinks that he's come up with some really avant-garde experimental writing style by capitalizing random nouns and I-speak-he-speaks dialogs, but his writing is mediocre and irritating. It becomes good on rare occasions, like the passage describing his root-canal procedure without anesthesia (another lie, by the way), but on other occasions he relapses to the other extreme and writes like a barely-literate juvenile.

I don't care about this guy and I don't care about his story. The book left me feeling angry at myself for giving some self-indulgent asshole the satisfaction of having another reader. I'm really happy that I borrowed the book from the library and didn't give him some of my money as well.

If I could rate this lower I would. I couldn't finish it. I got less than half way and I couldn't take it anymore.

I don't care about the Oprah fiasco. I didn't read it because it was on her reads list. I only read what sounds interesting to me. Except in this case. A friend wanted me to read it so I did. Well, as much as I could anyway. I was irritated from the get go by the formatting. There was no quotation marks despite all the dialogue.

Things were written like this.
All the time.
This was the dialogue format.
It was annoying as fuck.
And if itty bitty sentences weren't used then they were constant runs on that didn't even have an commas or anything and there was so much repeating repeating repeating repeating repeating repeating of a few words.

My dog likes to get in the way when I'm on my laptop. He likes to type to people and I kid you not, my dog does better punctuation than this guy.

This guy... I didn't read the book as non-fiction. I just read it as a book. I let the writer build the world and I went along for the ride. But the ride was utter bullshit. The characters were horrible. And not in the "he's a bad person" sort of way. I've come across a lot of purely villainous characters in the past. But they at least were well written.

His rebellion against the twelve step program wasn't brave and ballsy as he tried to make it out to be. Honestly, it was just annoying. And I can't count how many times he went off about one more drink would kill him, etc. And I don't give a damn if this is "based off a true story" or whatever. I wished the guy would just take that drink. I wanted him to drink so he would die and never open his mouth again.

I forced myself to get half way through this book. Then I thought about my huge TBR list and how it's so full of books I'm excited to read. Life's just too short to waste on books you hate, so I closed it and I'm never cracking it open again. I'm just thankful I borrowed it and didn't waste money on it.

I just re-read this for the first time since I initially went through it years ago - high school I think. This book still hits hard. It’s intense - but the intensity is necessary considering the topic.

I know the idea of certain parts being exaggerated or fabricated doesn’t sit well with some readers. I get that. But read it as fiction then - it’s still a very good read.

"אני לבד. לבד כאן ולבד בעולם. לבד בלב ולבד במוח. לבד בכל מקום, כל הזמן, מאז שאני זוכר. לבד עם המשפחה, לבד עם החברים, לבד בחדר מלא אנשים. לבד כשאני מתעורר, לבד במהלך כל יום ויום, לבד כשאני מגיע לבסוף אל החשכה. אני לבד בזוועה שלי. לבד בזוועה שלי. אני לא רוצה להיות לבד. מעולם לא רציתי להיות לבד. אני שונא את זה. נורא שונא את זה. "

הספר "מיליון רסיסים קטנים" עורר שערוריה רבתית בזמנו בשל החירות הספרותית שנקט המחבר בחלקים מסוימים של הספר וכך נתפס שרימה את ציבור הקוראים שלו שסבר (גם בעידוד הסופר) שמדובר בסיפור אמיתי. יחד עם זאת מדובר בסיפור סוחף, שואב ונוגע ללב שקשה להתנתק ממנו.

זהו סיפורו של בחור בן 23 ממשפחה נורמטיבית, שבוקר אחד מתעורר במטוס לאחר שאיבד 4 משיניו, חור מדמם בלחיו ואין לו זיכרון מאין הוא מגיע ולאן הוא טס. לאחר שהוא נאסף ע"י הוריו בשדה התעופה הוא מאושפז במכון גמילה מאלכוהול וסמים וכך הוא מתאר את חיו:

"ג'יימס פריי. נולד בקליבלנד, אוהיו, ב-12 בספטמבר 1969. התחיל לגנוב שלוקים מכוסיות משקה בגיל שבע. דפק את הראש בפעם הראשונה בגיל עשר. הקיא משתיה מופרזת בפעם הראשונה בגיל עשר. עישן גראס בגיל 12. בגיל 13 שתה ועישן בקביעות. איבד את ההכרה בפעם הראשונה בגיל 14. בגיל 15 נעצר 3 פעמים. על נהיגה ללא רישיון, ונדליזם וחבלה ברכוש, שכרות בציבור והחזקת אלכוהול בהיותו קטין. בילה לילה במעצר. בגיל 15 התנסה בפעם הראשונה בקוקאין, אל-אס-די וספיד. נעצר שלוש פעמים נוספות בגיל 16..."

וכך בגיל 23, מוכה וחבוט כשגופו על סף התמוטטות ומוות ונפשו שבורה הוא צריך להחליט האם להיאבק למען החיים או לרדת ביגון שאולה. כשגופו ונפשו מבקשים את האלכוהול ואת הסמים, הוא יודע שאם יבחר בדרך הזו הוא גוזר את גורלו למוות. הוא אינו מאמין בשיטת 12 הצעדים וטוען שהשיטה מחליפה התמכרות אחת באחרת. וכך בעודו באישפוז במכון, יום אחרי יום הוא נלחם בשדה הקרב לפעמים הוא מצליח, לפעמים הוא נכשל, אבל תמיד בקצב מסחרר שואב בלי רחמים על עצמו או על הקורא רק הכרה צלולה בעבר ובכאב שהוא מסב למשפחתו ולקרוביו.

"השערים פתוחים ושלוש־עשרה שנים של התמכרות, אלימות, גיהינום ומה שמתלווה אליהם מבטאות את עצמן בדמעות הדחוסות וביבבות הכבדות ובקוצר הנשימה ובתחושת האובדן העצומה. האובדן מתפשט בי, ממלא אותי, מכריע אותי. זה אובדן של ילדות של התבגרות של אושר של נורמליות של אהבה של אמון של תבונה של אמונה באלוהים של משפחה של חברים של עתיד של פוטנציאל של כבוד עצמי של אנושיות של
שפיות של עצמי של הכול הכול הכול. איבדתי הכול ואני אבוד ונותר גוש של קינה, עצב, יגון, צער וכאב לב. אני אבוד. איבדתי. הכול. הכול."

גם אם הסופר נקט חירות סיפרותית, אין לי ספק שעמדה מאחורי הדבר החלטה מודעת על המסר שהוא מבקש להעביר לקוראים. אדם הבוחר בדרך האלכוהול והסמים צפוי לכאב, בדידות ואובדן של כל מה שידע בחייו. אני מאמינה שהסופר חשב שהמטרה מקדשת האמצעים ולטעמי הוא באמת עשה עבודה טובה מאוד.

הספר מאוד אמין, חשוף ולוכד. בקצה הסיפור יש תקווה, יש חברות, יש אהבה וגם אם אין אמונה באלוהים, יש אמונה בכוחות הריפוי האנושיים.

This is the only book I actually threw across the room when I was done. I wanted my time back.