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Holistic Guidance - Running with Scissors: A Memoir
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List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $7.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312938857
ISBN: 0312938853
Label: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2006-08-29
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Release Date: 2006-08-29
Studio: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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Editorial Reviews:
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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
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: genius
Comment: More entertaining in a fascinating way than hilarious but still worth every minute spent reading. I couldn't put it down. I disagree with people who say this book is offensive; i'd rather read one of Augusten's books than watch any U.S. news channel anyday - at least his work displays intelligence and compassion.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Comment: This is a great book, it's a faced paced book, an easy read that you become somewhat addicted to the plot and characters. He's a great writer and his comparisons and images are amazing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disgusting!
Comment: This book was absolutely disgusting and I don't believe even half of it actually happened.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nearly a masterpiece of white trash literature
Comment: This is a memoir (and a painfully sad one at that) of an boy ill-raised and neglected by a wildly irresponsible mother and psychologist-friend. Such brutal neglect is when a 33 year old pedophile molests him (a 13 year old boy then) on a regular basis and masks the relationship as "doing what lovers do". The mother and psychologist-friend see nothing wrong with the "relationship" and turn a blind eye. Another is when the psychologist-friend instructs his daughter to scoop out his feces from the toilet to let sunbake in the backyard. Although Burroughs presents this as a dysfunctional family at it's wierdness, there is obviously something more sinister going down, which Burroughs fails to see or present. On the upside, the author's wit and humor transcends his personal horror stories. There are moments in the first part of the book that are so shocking and funny, it's like nothing you've ever read before. Half way through the book the reader may find themselves tortured by a long yarn of people actiing dysfunctional. Rarely, if ever, does the book bother to go to any level deeper than freak story after freak story. Surely there are readers out there who would find the morbid humour in this book a masterpiece of the white trash literature. I certainly did, and after about 1/2 way through the book I decided I had enough fun.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Late to the party (and I don't regret it)
Comment: That anyone can read this book and think it is even in the least bit humorous, is beyond me.
I purchased this book because as an avid reader of classics, I enjoy dipping my toes back into what the populace at large is reading. And just as I found with 'The Kite Runner,' and 'Water for the Elephants,' my eyes were once again opened to a public that knows nothing of the written word, its use, its subtleties and its nuances. The reading public at large, if one can base an opinion of such on best sellers such as Running with Scissors, etc, have no idea what good literature is and will read anything that is placed before them.
That said, there are some redeeming qualities about the work in general. When an author can make me actually feel something, regardless of overall story, I consider their job halfway complete. Reading through some of the scenes a knot formed in the pit of my stomach, and at once I felt a terrible sorrow for the boy, and the situation that he was placed in. For example, in the scene describing his first "meeting" with Bookman I felt as though I needed to shower when it was over because I felt as dirty as the author. That's good writing! And throughout the work, there are several scenes in which the emotion was not only being read, but felt.
Overall, I wouldn't say that I enjoyed the book - it was far too disturbing for that. But I will say that the book was entertaining and insightful in that it further strengthened my belief that behind every closed door and white painted picket fence, there are things going on that would sicken us if we were allowed a peek.
Running with Scissors is neither a work of genius nor a classic. It is a mildly entertaining peek into the lives of some very, very disturbed and troubled (and troubling) people.
Three Stars.
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