Rating: 
Summary: Strange Family and a Humorous Book
Review: I read this book in a couple days - it was a very entertaining read.Yes this is one disturbing tale but also fascinating. The fact that this offbeat family functioned the way it did being led by a phsyciatrist is amazing. The author lampoons this family while also embracing them and their lunacy. It must be hard to have your main parent be mentally ill. The anger and amazement at his mother's behavior come through with great sypmathy & satire. I found it funny and disturbing at the same time. (cruelty to animals, fecal matter - things I find hard to read about) Not as good as PERMANENT MIDNIGHT by Jerry Stahl (another humorous book about an unfunny subject) or as well written as ANGELA's ASHES (Humrous childhood look at starvation). I would recommend if you like offbeat humor in your autobiographies.
Rating:
Summary: hauntingly disturbingly excellent
Review: I picked this book up on the recommendation of a friend who promised it would be unique and Running With Scissors did NOT disappoint!! I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book if you can't countenance "alternative" lifestyles because it does get pretty graphic in parts. But I didn't find those passages gratuitous, they just seemed to fit the mood of the book. Overall, I did enjoy this book though, it was tragic and hilarious at the same time.
Rating: 
Summary: In agreement
Review: As far as Memoirs go I would have to say that this book, running with Scissors ranks up there as one of the best I have read. The author does an excellent job of pulling the reader in and making them understand. This book is in the same genre as two other books I have read that I find to be equally as good. Nightmares Echo and My Fractured Life. Each is excellent in its own right.
Rating:
Summary: Call Me Crazy
Review: Nobody says you have to have to be twisted to enjoy Running With Scissors. I never played pro-football but I enjoy watching it. Just like My Fractured Life, it's about a guy who had a messed up childhood but has a sense of humor about it. You don't have to have had a twisted messed up life to enjoy reading about it.
Rating:
Summary: Should Be a Movie
Review: "Running With Scissors" should be a movie. The writing is so visual that you can see all the pictures in your head, just as if you were watching a movie. It is amazing how Augusten Burroughs makes such odd-ball characters so alive. His psychologist turned guardian is a pill popping dead ringer for Santa Clause. That kind of odd-ball characterization is what makes the book breath with life. I liked Burrough's "Sellevision" passionately, but "Running With Scissors" is even better and more like Rikki Lee Travolta's odd-ball "My Fractured Life." I can't say enough about the visual writing style. "Running With Scissors" is a winner.
Rating: 
Summary: How this man got published we'll never know
Review: I found RWS tiresome, shallow, and poorly written. I should have counted how many times the author employed such devices as "I looked like I had been run over by a truck..." -- how do YOU know how you look? Aren't you inhabiting your own body?
This was a sophomoric response to an incredibly traumatic (and often unbelievable) childhood; I pity the author, but should not have wasted my 4.5 hours reading his self-obsessed drivel.
Rating:
Summary: If you find yourself laughing at inapproprite times...
Review: This book may be for you. If you're easily offended by graphic depictions of gay sex, abuse, bodily functions & mental disorders, I'd advise you to stay away. You'll be more horrified than amused. A good friend bought my this book as part of a package of things that reminded him of me. I'm so glad he did. My childhood feels positively normal compared to this boy's. This ia a graphic, hilariously dark tale of child abuse, neglect, addictions, craziness, homosexuality, and of surviving. There were parts of the book I was appalled at, parts I empathized with, and parts that I couldn't read because I couldn't quit laughing. However, if you can see past the surface of things, you may just empathize a bit with this confused, bright, resiliant, neglected & abused boy. There were chapters that horrified me when I realized that these things actually happened. On the flip side, there were scenes that had my laughing hysterically. His obsession with his & everyone's elses hair, and the episodes of the dying cat, and the many messages from God are both disturbing and funny. If a young boy could survive & thrive after living though this hopefully untypical childhood, it gives me hope that things may work out ok after all. I can't wait to see what happens next.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It's unlike anything I've ever read. I found it to be pretty funny, but I did have to keep reminding myself this all actually happened to someone. It's a sobering thought. That aside though, the people poor Augusten had to grow up with are quite entertaining and amusing, as well as sad. I highly recommend this book, and can't wait to read Dry, but be prepared for some messed up stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Among the Best
Review: In Running With Scissors and its follow up Dry, Augusten Burroughs has created some of the most elite stories of graduation from addiction and abuse every written. Although credited as a Memoir, Running With Scissors blends its facts with the freshness of fiction. There is an interplay of comical musings that tempers the stains of addiction and abuse. Running With Scissors screams to be made into a movie to celebrate its brilliance in colorful life. In the world of books Running With Scissors and Dry stand together in the elite world of Naked Lunch and My Fractured Life. The road of delivery is slightly different, but the end product is superb.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book! Soooo Entertaining and FUNNY!
Review: I read this book and was sad that it ended! It was the most bizarre, entertaining, twisted and funny book I have ever read! I am going to the bookstore tonight to get all of Burroughs books! DO NOT read if you do not care for sex, homosexuality and very unusual ways of thinking....not a book for the prude! I LOVED every minute of it! 5 stars all the way! Well written and extremely creative!
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