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Running With Scissors: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Augusten Burroughs
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: EBooks
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.99
You Save: $5.96 (43%)
Rating:  830 reviews
Sales Rank: 684
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
ASIN: B000FA5T1K
Publication Date: September 9, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Amazon.com Review
There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. --John Moe
Product Description
Almost everyone can claim a crazy childhood. But did you have a childhood with: An electroshock machine as your favorite toy? Parades through the neighborhood led by your adopted psychiatrist/father? The whole family sleeping on the front lawn for weeks on end? Scotch for breakfast at age 13? A faked suicide attempt to get excused from the sixth grade? A pedophile living in the backyard shed? A psychiatric patient locked in the upstairs bedroom? Christmas trees in May and turkey carcasses under the couch? Lithium, Valium, and Halcyon to eat like candy? Running With Scissors will shock, amaze and disturb you, and will never let you forget the story of an ordinary boy in anything-but-ordinary situation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 825 more reviews...
 READER BEWARE! LITERARY TRASH!!!!!!!!!!!! January 2, 2009
First off let me state that the first half of this book was well written. When you get to the middle of the book it goes straight downhill. I really didn't need to experience the vivid details of his first gay experience. I don't care in what fashion it has to do with this bizarre story, and if the man was a pedophile...AS A READER AND A HUMAN BEING, I DON'T NEED TO VISUALIZE THIS. After reading this filth, I skipped ahead to see if there could possibly be more. There was, and this time it was a full blown experience of anal sex. I am so pissed that I wasted so much time reading this to have something get so vile and vulgar so fast.
Even more, I can't get over the "hype" of this book. There were so many raving reviews of this. I am astounded and dumbfounded at the same time. A lot of reviewers compare him to David Sedaris. I can tell you that as a fan of Sedaris...This writer is no Sedaris.
I had such high hopes for discovering a new writer like this. I just wish that I had read more of the poor reviews. This book could have been so much better on so many levels. I found it to be vulgar, disgusting and the worst book and writer I have ever read before. This is not a "homophobic" review. The writing was just vile.
All in all this literary experience started out good and just went bad, really bad.
 A great start in your Burroughs obsession. December 28, 2008
This was a great memoir. My first Augusten Burroughs read AND memoir. Strange, witty, and sometimes uncomfortable to read, but all around enjoyable. The ending did upset me a bit... and please, STAY AWAY FROM THE MOVIE!
about the worst book I have read during 2008, NO, I did not even finish it. December 26, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I tried to read it, I gave it a good shot but.... it's total trash.
nothing funny about it, plain trash.
I wish I could get my money back.
I just threw the book in the ...... TRASH !
don't buy it, don't read it.
Hans Muellers
 Creepy Yet Humorous December 24, 2008
The childhood of Augusten Burrough's is for lack of a better word disturbing. The writer's tone is quite interesting and enjoyable. Considering how the book is a memoir written about the authors youth it can become extremely gruesome especially the homosexual love scenes between the teenager and the thirty year old man. The people that are written about in the novel are all very enjoyable to read about especially Hope, Deidre, and Natalie because the author writes about the women so beautifully. Every character has his/her own personality. I do think that it is necessary to read the rest of the books about his life to get the whole perspective because this ends with something that could be considered a cliffhanger.
 WOw December 22, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have been a Sedaris fan for a while. But when I discovered Mr Augusten , I absolutely prefer him , its just genius.
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