Running with Scissors: A Memoir

Running with Scissors: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs

Running with Scissors: A Memoir
List Price: $7.99
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Buy Running with Scissors: A Memoir at Amazon.com
(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Augusten Burroughs
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-29
ISBN: 0312938853
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Product features:

Book Reviews of Running with Scissors: A Memoir

Book Review: Disturbingly Entertaining.
Summary: 4 Stars

I can't help but compare this book to a train wreck - you don't want to stare, but you can't look away. I couldn't put this book down, but there were times when I was slightly embarrassed by what I was reading! And that takes a lot - I'm a very open-minded person.

With that out of the way, this was a great book! I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a humorous read. I do NOT recommend this one to anyone prudish or closed-minded to any type of alternative lifestyle.

Summary of Running with Scissors: A Memoir

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.

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

Authors Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Gay Books
Running with Scissors: A Memoir ImageRunning with Scissors: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's Paperbacks; Published: 2006-08-29; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.85
Price in other shops: $7.99
Band Fags! ImageBand Fags!
by Frank Anthony Polito
Kensington; Published: 2008-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.78
Price in other shops: $15.00
Maurice: A Novel ImageMaurice: A Novel
by E. M. Forster
W.W. Norton & Co.; Published: 2005-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.77
Price in other shops: $13.95
Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent ImageWithout You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent
by Anthony Rapp
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2006-10-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.60
Price in other shops: $14.00
Boy Meets Boy ImageBoy Meets Boy
by David Levithan
Knopf Books for Young Readers; Published: 2005-05-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.79
Price in other shops: $8.95
Hero ImageHero
by Perry Moore
Hyperion Book CH; Published: 2009-05-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.65
Price in other shops: $8.99
Interview with the Vampire ImageInterview with the Vampire
by Anne Rice
Ballantine Books; Published: 1997-03-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops: $16.00
Kirith Kirin ImageKirith Kirin
by Jim Grimsley
Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc.; Published: 2000-05-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $75.00
Mordred, Bastard Son (Mordred Trilogy) ImageMordred, Bastard Son (Mordred Trilogy)
by Douglas Clegg
Alyson Books; Published: 2007-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.75
Price in other shops: $14.95
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Barnes & Noble Classics) ImageThe Picture of Dorian Gray (Barnes & Noble Classics)
by Oscar Wilde
Barnes & Noble Classics; Published: 2004-09-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.95
Similar Books and other products
A Million Little Pieces ImageA Million Little Pieces
by James Frey
Anchor; Published: 2005-09-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops: $15.95
You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas ImageYou Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas
by Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2009-10-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.77
Price in other shops: $21.99
Naked ImageNaked
by David Sedaris
Back Bay Books; Published: 1998-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.48
Price in other shops: $14.99
Running With Scissors ImageRunning With Scissors
SONY PICTURES HOME ENT; Release date: 2007-02-06; DVD
Best price: $4.45
Price in other shops: $14.94
Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's ImageLook Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's
by John Elder Robison
Three Rivers Press; Published: 2008-09-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.72
Price in other shops: $14.95
A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father ImageA Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2009-03-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.60
Price in other shops: $14.00
Sellevision: A Novel ImageSellevision: A Novel
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2003-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops: $14.00
Possible Side Effects ImagePossible Side Effects
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2007-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.70
Price in other shops: $14.00
Magical Thinking: True Stories ImageMagical Thinking: True Stories
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2005-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.79
Price in other shops: $14.00
Dry: A Memoir ImageDry: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2004-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.49
Price in other shops: $14.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories