A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive

A Child Called "It" - Dave Pelzer I've just read two different articles about Pelzer's work, and now my take is: I am glad I read this book, and I enjoyed it, but I'm not going to read the rest of them. Certain quotes disturbed me:But there is a creepier reason for Pelzermania. He has turned child abuse into entertainment. Pelzer likes to be known as the guy who "makes child abuse fun." He repeatedly refers to himself as "Robin Williams in glasses." His public appearances are manic and joking, filled with imitations of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton. He craves a career in stand-up comedy. (If Schadenfreude is joy at others' sorrow, what is joy at your own?)--Slate magazinePelzer frequently purchases his own books for his signings at a discount and then sells them at list price. It is not clear whether these sales alone keep his books on the best-seller lists. The big bookselling chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders, as well as huge stores like Wal-Mart and online sellers like Amazon, refuse to release specific sales numbers. So if they sell 10,000 copies of ''A Child Called 'It''' in a week, there is no way to know whether that was made up of bulk sales or the combined individual sales from all their stores. Still, those 10,000 books would be tallied for best-seller purposes.--NYTimes