Running with Scissors: A Memoir
by: Augusten Burroughs
Price: $7.99
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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:
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.
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
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- Wonderful, irreverent
What a great book. The stories are surreal, I couldn't put it down. Worth every penny.
Rating: 
- A Disturbing Childhood
I didn't find this book funny at all. It was certainly shocking, not to mention disgusting and plainly horrifying in parts. Unlike _Magical Thinking_, this didn't have the feeling of David Sedaris' writing at all. This was hard to believe, and mostly just sad. I just didn't enjoy reading it. It was hard to put down though, in the same way it is hard to speed past a crash site.
Rating: 
- Dreadful
I borrowed this book to read on a flight and after persevering through half of it I slipped it into the seat pocket in front of me for the next passenger. Written clearly to shock and amuse it basically catalogues a series of highly improbable and mostly disturbing incidents, sprinkled with scenes of unnecessarily gratuitous sex. The psychiatrist patriarch was a character of interest and the main reason, along with misleading praise on the back cover, for my bothering past the second page.
Rating: 
- awesome book
ok, the bad ratings are a little ridiculous for this book so i had to comment.
READ THE DESCRIPTION ONLINE BEFORE GETTING THE BOOK!
It's not a book for children and if you read the description- it's obviously a pretty messed up, way dark humor book and that would be so clear if you just read the description!
really good book. easy read read it in two nights because i couldnt quit turning the pages. its so messed up its hilarious. touching and heartbreaking in some parts. ... Read More
Rating: 
- Rambling around.
I found the book rambling around, you need to have one month time to finish the book, for me it is too long of a read.But it got some interesting points in book.
- Wonderful, irreverentWhat a great book. The stories are surreal, I couldn't put it down. Worth every penny.
- A Disturbing ChildhoodI didn't find this book funny at all. It was certainly shocking, not to mention disgusting and plainly horrifying in parts. Unlike _Magical Thinking_, this didn't have the feeling of David Sedaris' writing at all. This was hard to believe, and mostly just sad. I just didn't enjoy reading it. It was hard to put down though, in the same way it is hard to speed past a crash site.
- DreadfulI borrowed this book to read on a flight and after persevering through half of it I slipped it into the seat pocket in front of me for the next passenger. Written clearly to shock and amuse it basically catalogues a series of highly improbable and mostly disturbing incidents, sprinkled with scenes of unnecessarily gratuitous sex. The psychiatrist patriarch was a character of interest and the main reason, along with misleading praise on the back cover, for my bothering past the second page.
- awesome bookok, the bad ratings are a little ridiculous for this book so i had to comment.
READ THE DESCRIPTION ONLINE BEFORE GETTING THE BOOK!
It's not a book for children and if you read the description- it's obviously a pretty messed up, way dark humor book and that would be so clear if you just read the description!
really good book. easy read read it in two nights because i couldnt quit turning the pages. its so messed up its hilarious. touching and heartbreaking in some parts. ... Read More
- Rambling around.I found the book rambling around, you need to have one month time to finish the book, for me it is too long of a read.But it got some interesting points in book.
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