Running with Scissors: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Augusten Burroughs
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  828 reviews
Sales Rank: 3955
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312938853
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312938857
ASIN: 0312938853
Publication Date: August 29, 2006
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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
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year-round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull, an electroshock therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing, and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances…
Running with Scissors Acknowledgments
Gratitude doesn’t begin to describe it: Jennifer Enderlin, Christopher Schelling, John Murphy, Gregg Sullivan, Kim Cardascia, Michael Storrings, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press. Thank you: Lawrence David, Suzanne Finnamore, Robert Rodi, Bret Easton Ellis, Jon Pepoon, Lee Lodes, Jeff Soares, Kevin Weidenbacher, Lynda Pearson, Lona Walburn, Lori Greenburg, John DePretis, and Sheila Cobb. I would also like to express my appreciation to my mother and father for, no matter how inadvertently, giving me such a memorable childhood. Additionally, I would like to thank the real-life members of the family portrayed in this book for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own. I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors. Most of all, I would like to thank my brother for demonstrating, by example, the importance of being wholly unique.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 823 more reviews...
 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
1 out of 1 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.
An Attention Grabber! December 18, 2008
While reading this book I was taken aback by certain events that took place, I think to appreciate this book you have to have the type of personality that is easy going and you definitely have to have a warped sense of humor.
I really enjoyed this book, it was funny and appalling at the same time, it keep my attention the entire time. I can't wait to read, "Dry" and "A Wolf at the Table."
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