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Running with Scissors: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242006.Running_with_Scissors_A_Memoir?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Running with Scissors: A Memoir" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1173051732m/242006.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242006.Running_with_Scissors_A_Memoir?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Running with Scissors: A Memoir</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3058.Augusten_Burroughs">Augusten Burroughs</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6962362?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars 
 Running With Scissors by August Burroughs is one of the books that are so worthy of being made into a movie, not just because of its success as a book (New York Times Bestseller, Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book of 2002), but because while reading it you can visualize the whole thing, because your laughing so hard you wake your husband up who is lying next to you at 1:00 in the morning because you can’t put it down, and he says “it can’t be that funny.” And it is! And so they’re making a movie of it.
 But unlike so many pointless comedies that Hollywood makes, this one isn't a comedy but a real story. Burroughs pours himself out. Makes himself totally and completely transparent, not letting up on any of the details. 
 
 Augusten is the child of a 1970’s-confessional-poet gone crazy.
 	"Not crazy in a let’s paint the kitchen bright red! sort of way. But crazy in a gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God sort of way. Gone were the days when she 	would stand on the deck lighting the lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax." 
 
 His father had issues of his own.
 	"My father was otherwise occupied in his role of highly functional alcoholic professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts. He had psoriasis 	that covered his entire body and gave him the appearance of a dried mackerel that 	could stand upright and wear tweed. And he had the loving, affectionate, and outgoing personality of petrified wood."
 
 Life keeps taking drastic dips when he ends up in the legal custody of his mother’s extremely odd shrink, who believes that God speaks to him directly through his bowel movements, and he finds himself continuously surrounded in a world of chaos with absolutely no boundaries. 
 	"Freedom was what we had. Nobody told us when to go to bed. Nobody told us when to do our homework. Nobody told us we couldn’t drink two six-packs of Budweiser and then throw up in the Maytag. So why did I feel so trapped? Why 	did I feel like I had no options in my life when it seemed like options were the 	only thing I did have?"
 
 But Burroughs’s story is not a whiny one. It is simply his story. His amazingly detailed coming-of-age, 100% full Technicolor story of a very strange childhood. 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/242201?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Talia's review
rating:
bookshelves: memoir

Running With Scissors by August Burroughs is one of the books that are so worthy of being made into a movie, not just because of its success as a book (New York Times Bestseller, Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book of 2002), but because while reading it you can visualize the whole thing, because your laughing so hard you wake your husband up who is lying next to you at 1:00 in the morning because you can’t put it down, and he says “it can’t be that funny.” And it is! And so they’re making a movie of it.
But unlike so many pointless comedies that Hollywood makes, this one isn't a comedy but a real story. Burroughs pours himself out. Makes himself totally and completely transparent, not letting up on any of the details.

Augusten is the child of a 1970’s-confessional-poet gone crazy.
"Not crazy in a let’s paint the kitchen bright red! sort of way. But crazy in a gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand o...more
Running With Scissors by August Burroughs is one of the books that are so worthy of being made into a movie, not just because of its success as a book (New York Times Bestseller, Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book of 2002), but because while reading it you can visualize the whole thing, because your laughing so hard you wake your husband up who is lying next to you at 1:00 in the morning because you can’t put it down, and he says “it can’t be that funny.” And it is! And so they’re making a movie of it.
But unlike so many pointless comedies that Hollywood makes, this one isn't a comedy but a real story. Burroughs pours himself out. Makes himself totally and completely transparent, not letting up on any of the details.

Augusten is the child of a 1970’s-confessional-poet gone crazy.
"Not crazy in a let’s paint the kitchen bright red! sort of way. But crazy in a gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand on the deck lighting the lemon-scented candles without then having to eat the wax."

His father had issues of his own.
"My father was otherwise occupied in his role of highly functional alcoholic professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts. He had psoriasis that covered his entire body and gave him the appearance of a dried mackerel that could stand upright and wear tweed. And he had the loving, affectionate, and outgoing personality of petrified wood."

Life keeps taking drastic dips when he ends up in the legal custody of his mother’s extremely odd shrink, who believes that God speaks to him directly through his bowel movements, and he finds himself continuously surrounded in a world of chaos with absolutely no boundaries.
"Freedom was what we had. Nobody told us when to go to bed. Nobody told us when to do our homework. Nobody told us we couldn’t drink two six-packs of Budweiser and then throw up in the Maytag. So why did I feel so trapped? Why did I feel like I had no options in my life when it seemed like options were the only thing I did have?"

But Burroughs’s story is not a whiny one. It is simply his story. His amazingly detailed coming-of-age, 100% full Technicolor story of a very strange childhood.
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