Running with Scissors: A Memoir
3 journalers for this copy...
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.
On loan to a co-worker.
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========================
DEAR FINDER,
Welcome to BookCrossing.com, where we are trying to making the whole world a library!
If you have not already done so, please make a journal entry so we know this book has found a new home. You don't need to join BookCrossing and you can remain completely anonymous. However, we encourage you to join so that you can follow this book's future travels. It's fun and free, and your personal information will never be shared or sold. If you decide to join, consider listing Fracula as referring you.
Take your time reading the book, and after you finish, please make another journal entry to record your thoughts about it. This book is now yours, and you can keep it if you choose, though we would love for you to share it. If you pass it along, please make a release note to let others know where you left it.
Are you in the Calgary area and interested in meeting up with other Calgary BookCrossers? Please check out our facebook group, "BookCrossing Calgary" for details on how. Meeting are held on the second Saturday of every month at the Joshua Tree Cafe starting at 11am. New Crossers are always welcome.
On loan to me from Fracula. Along with the others she gave me I will busy reading for a while. Looking forward to reading this as it was one I have been interested in picking up for a while.
I understand that there is some question on the interpretation of events and a court case was ultimately launched and settled with respect to the portrayal of the therapists family. I really hope that there was a lot of "creative license" used by the author because with the childhood he describes it is truly remarkable that he "made it out alive" and without being utterly insane like many of those around him.
I didn't find the book as funny as some have described and would probably classify it more as tragic or disturbing. It's well written and the individual events and episodes in each chapter are entertaining but when you think about it being real life experience, I'm just happy I can't identify with it.
I didn't find the book as funny as some have described and would probably classify it more as tragic or disturbing. It's well written and the individual events and episodes in each chapter are entertaining but when you think about it being real life experience, I'm just happy I can't identify with it.
This book was lent to me by my co-worker (Fracula). I have returned it to her to put back on her TBR pile. Thanks.
Thanks for the great review! Now back on my groaning bookshelf!
Oh, my.... I finally read the book I'd loaned to my co-worker. He must think I'm quite the wacko (or perv) to lend him such a book. It was like a train wreck that one can't help but watch.
The author stands by this as a memoir - see this Wiki link (which contains spoilers):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_with_Scissors_(memoir)
Not sure what to do with this book next. Maybe safest to find some one who has this on a wishlist.
The author stands by this as a memoir - see this Wiki link (which contains spoilers):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_with_Scissors_(memoir)
Not sure what to do with this book next. Maybe safest to find some one who has this on a wishlist.
Sent to another BookCrosser as a RABCK. Hope you enjoy this wishlist book!
Got the book! Thanks a lot, Fracula. I'll read it as soon as I can and let you know what I thought of it. I'll then find someone else who wants to read it. ;)