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Running with Scissors: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Augusten Burroughs
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $5.94
You Save: $14.01 (70%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  830 reviews
Sales Rank: 865324
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2
ISBN: 0312355645
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312355647
ASIN: 0312355645
Publication Date: September 5, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Hardcover. Binding is tight. Dust jacket is in very good condition. Minimal wear to cover.
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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 psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs....
Running with Scissors is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it chronicles 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 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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