Book Review: “Diary of an Oxygen Thief”
September 25, 2017
I am going to give you a chance to stop reading right now. This novel isn’t worth a second of your time or an ounce of the credit you might give it for once being a “New York Times” bestseller. It is a sick, twisted, crass, lewd, whiny, disorganized, crude, impudent, and entirely inane piece of formless, noxious gelatin that you would probably burn, along with your shoe, if you had stepped in it.
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“Diary of an Oxygen Thief,” self-reported as an autobiography, was published first in 2006 in the Netherlands by an anonymous author. The likewise anonymous narrator begins by stating, “I like hurting girls” — and if that is not enough to turn you away, I guarantee that one of the next 150 pages certainly will. No, it does not get better, nor does it employ reverse psychology (as I did in deceiving you to read this article). “Diary of an Oxygen Thief” truly stays a piece of parasitic, brain-sucking compost for its entirety.
Here is what you get to look forward to after that stunning opening line: Our cheeky alcoholic Irish narrator explains, in acute detail, how he inflicts emotional abuse upon women, all the while subjecting you to his paranoiac delusions. He then moves to Minnesota for two boring years (that to you will feel like two millennia) and falls in love, which leads to a sequence of ridiculous events that attempts to convey the story’s petty message but drastically fails at doing so.
If at any point in the future you find yourself picking up this book, DO NOT open it. Place it back where you found it — in fact, throw it — and calmly remove yourself from its vicinity before calling the nearest pest control exterminator.
lola • Jan 18, 2024 at 2:38 am
i liked it, but that doesn’t mean to much coming from a 14 year old
andy mullenax • Jan 15, 2024 at 9:06 pm
I am the real author of Diary of an oxygen thief. Around 2014 to 2015 I was working at a country club and sent them the script for star wars the force awakens. They turned it into a movie with out crediting me or paying me. They published some of my other works, but the history of diary of an oxygen thief of when it was first published was fabricated. if anyone can help me, because it has been ten years and they still havent paid me. Thank you for the scathing review. It was suppose to be a controversial book but for some reason it hasnt become a classic. I wrote a new book called Anti homeless architecture where some of it is explained.
Destiny • Jan 15, 2024 at 4:18 pm
I read the book & it’s not that I didn’t like it I just thought it was SO uninteresting it bored me to be completely honest the first page sucked me in but after that it all went downhill from there I don’t recommend unless you want to be bored to death x
JGD • Aug 26, 2023 at 3:08 pm
Writing style was fine.
Character was easily unlikeable, which I think, was probably the point.
Reviews like this, which are so vehemently passionate against its contents, should get eyebrows raising.
It’s a book for Christ’s sake
aliza • Dec 19, 2022 at 8:24 pm
you dont understand, this book wasn’t supposed to please others.
The author wrote this book as a form of self therapy (which he mentions plenty of times in the book) and also the book was supposed to be how you explained it.
Sloppy, vile and other stuff.
If there’s something in the book that reminded you of one of your experiences you should have read the trigger warnings!
niklas.brandstourm • Dec 3, 2021 at 4:50 pm
I completly disagree with you. Tbh “Diary of an Oxygen Thief” and the other two books from the author are my absolute favorites. I like the writing style of the author, even tho its messy and unorganized. The entire book feels very real and was fascinating to read. 🙂
NO NAME • Sep 28, 2021 at 5:42 pm
Although I see the point of some of the other people in the comments, I have to agree with this article. The writing style is sloppy and disorganised and makes it very difficult to follow the story. Although this can be forgiven as it’s an autobiography and probably the first publication from this author. I would have appreciated this story a lot more, and would have perhaps really enjoyed it, if he had ever shown any growth. He is clearly very self aware and yet still speaks very degradingly of women throughout this book. He does this in past tense, but it also seems he still holds many of these opinions, including slut shaming women who swallow. The author comes across, not as someone who once was a narcissist sociopath but as someone who still is. I bought this book mainly on a whim but also because I am a victim of the kind of emotional manipulation that he inflicted on the girls in this story. In fact, reading his interactions with Pen felt like I was reliving my experience. As someone who is a victim, the way he speaks about his victims in this book is still with such a level of control and manipulation that I find it very difficult to believe he is truly sorry at all. To me, this comes across less like someone who wants to tell the world who they really are or as an apology to his victims, but as a trophy or to gloat about what he managed to do to others. This book could have been really promising but I’m disappointed in it’s unbelievable lack of empathy and its sloppiness in regards to other’s feelings. He still speaks about the girls he did these things to in such a way that I would feel immoral keeping it on my bookcase.
Max • Apr 22, 2021 at 10:25 am
Totally untrue. The book talks about how he USED to be, and how he exoerienced the same thing he would do to other people, and changed. Did you even read it?
Andre • Jan 28, 2021 at 2:54 pm
I think you have been hurt before and hate the book because it touches on a sensitive subject you have gone through because quite frankly, you got this whole review wrong
Dalton • Apr 8, 2020 at 1:51 am
I do understand your criticism completely considering it is a book about a man who does terrible things. However the book was not written to say that he’s not a bad person. The author wrote this to share who he is, he is clearly showing that although he knows what he was doing is wrong he still has tendencies to do it. I think this book was more written so that people could go into his mind and somewhat understand that there is more to the picture that him just being a bad person. Also the quote you use referring to the beginning of the book is very clearly “I liked hurting girls” not “I like hurting girls” and i feel that that changes the meaning of the quote completely. Also personally i found this review not very accurate because it was solely put out to say that it was bad without going into much detail about the book and what it is as a whole.