ISBN: 031242227X Running with Scissors: A Memoir Authors : Augusten Burroughs Manufacturer:  Picador  Tell A Friend:   List Price:  $14.00             Your Price:  $8.09

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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   Customer Reviews   Filed it in my circular file Rating:  This book was advertised as darkly humorous. I found it dark but not humorous. It was the only book I can remember throwing away because I just couldn't see any redeeming value in it. The author fills us in on whats happening but not really how this affects him emotionally. I must admit I kept wondering where the neighbors were through all the weird goings on at the "old victorian house on a nice street". Also, the scenes between Neil and the author were just a little to graphic. I'm not asking for sugar coating, I know these things happen, but just a little less detail would have been better. I was disappointed with this book and wish I had taken the time to read the reviews before I bought it. Don't waste your time or your money. doesn't live up to the hype Rating:  I gave it a solid 50 pages before putting it down. AB just goes on and on about his outrageous teen years and probably embellished events without discernable humor. This is another one that makes me ask how did it ever end up on the best-seller's list. I suppose its popularity is due to its being compared to Sedaris but it is not near as good. Though I'm not a huge fan of Sedaris either at least there are occasional points of humor that are completely lacking with Burroughs who just plays up his disfunctional family and sickening events of his childhood..yada..yada..yawn. Sick/crazy/unique childhood doesn't alone doesn't make entertaining writing. Comical, Compelling, Farcical, Fierce Rating:  This was one of the most intriguing books I've ever listened to, not only the writing and the content, but he narration by the author. There is something about Augusten Burroughs' ability to talk to you as if you've known each other forever that is rare even among actors who normally narrate the best books. No matter how absurd the situation the main character finds himself in, his take on it is always that combination of wry amusement and naive expectation common to intelligent children. I love Burroughs because although he is never childish, he is always childlike. Can't wait for more of his audiobooks!!!

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