Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly Entertaining Train Wreck
Review: Reading this book filled me with two simultaneous and contradictory emotions. Envy. I wish my childhood was one tenth as entertaining as his was. And Gratitude. I'm really glad my childhood was so normal that it's not worth talking about. His story is that interesting and is definitely worth the read. Picture a Dickensian orphan's tale as told by the cast of a spinoff of the Mary Tyler Moore show.
Rating: 
Summary: Twisted, but funny
Review: Wow, and I thought my childhood was whacky. These people can't be real, no shrink could be that screwed up! (Could he?) Shocking, entertaining, and compelling. Not for anyone who can be easily disturbed by the printed word. But for everyone else, yeah, go ahead and try this. Gives new meaning to the term 'dysfunctional family'.
Also recommended: NO ONE'S EVEN BLEEDING and DELANO
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely unsettling
Review: I felt truly sick after finishing this book. How could someone be even partially sane after living as Augusten did during his childhood and adolescence? Do people as emotionally bereft and unbalanced as the characters in this book really exist? Surely somone other than the waitress at the diner had the good sense and compassion to intercede in the insanity? Wouldn't the neighbors in the psychiatrist's neighborhood have registered numerous complaints with the authorities? My heart is unbelievably heavy at the thought that anyone, especially a child, has lived or lives like this.
Rating:
Summary: After I read it I picked it up and read it again!!!!!
Review: I loved this book so much, it is nothing like a Jerry Springer show. The characters, who are obviously real (aren't they?) are so increible and there are people in this book that I wish I could meet. Honestly, when I read Running With Scissors I thought I had the strangest, most horrible, funniest childhood, but Augusten's book about being raised by his mom's shrink in Northport made me think again.
I loved it when Augusten and Natalie sang in the Mental institution, when the psychiatrist starts predicting the future using his bowel movements and Hope, dear and lovely Hope, starts insisting the cat is dying for no reason. If you have ever felt as if your parents were no good read this, it will humble you, make you laugh out loud, and give you some kind of release from those all-too-serious self-help books that weigh your bookshelves down. I hope he writes many more books. If he does not, I'll be deeply dissapointed.
Rating: 
Summary: It made me laugh out loud several times.
Review: This is the tender story of thirteen-year-olds with middle-aged lovers, psychotic parents, oracular turds (yes, you read that right) 'bible dips' and a psychiatrist with a "Masturbatorium" in his offices. The last I heard, Burroughs was only being sued for libel by one relative, which shocks me far more than anything he wrote.
Rating:
Summary: Augusten
Review: If it wasn't a memoir I would have thought it gratuitous and tossed it aside! The fact that this is a true stroy makes it so very shocking. I went from finding it humorous to wanting to cry for the young Augusten. And I thought MY family was a freak show!!!
Well written with an amazing outlook on the authors part, a tribute to what the human child can endure. His realisation towards the end that if he could survive his childhood he could survive anything resonated.
I can't help but think a lot of the rave reviews are more about the amazing events described than the author's writing ability.
Rating:
Summary: Fact stranger than Fiction stranger than Fact
Review: Finishing reading the enormously entertaining RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, a 'memoir by Augusten Buroughs' poses the question "Can memoirs ever be fact when they are filtered by retrospection and memory distortion?" The key word here is 'memoirs', and so we can accept this as not an autobiorgraphy but a series of memories written down in a cathartic swoop. It really doesn't make any difference, this attempt to analyze the veracity of Burroughs' book. It remains a very fine foray into exploring where our youth find themselves in the world as it presents itself today.RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is filled with a cast of inimitable characters, and at times the characters become caricatures, so weird and bizarre their behavior. But at the core of this explosion of madness is the young narrator who hilariously but tenderly discusses his acceptance of being gay, his adoration of the cosmetic empires, his need to perform makeovers on his closer associates, and his steadfastness in living a life bordering the incredible and surviviing it all. Augusten Burroughs is a likeable kid and manages to influence all those who surround him: his thirtysomething lover (when he is but fourteen), a looney psychiatrist to whom his wholly mad mother deserts him, the Finch House wherein dwells the family of the new father/shrink in the midst of squalor and filth, his 'adopted' sisters, etc. The joy in reading this wild ride of a story is the calm demeanor in which it is told. I have no idea how much of this memior is true, but I don't really care. There is so much of the way we live - in global alienation - spun into searing details that, like all good comedy, hits us at the end with a kick in the gut. Recommended for the adventurous reader!
Rating:
Summary: this book is...excellent thing
Review: I read this book in a day, which is something ive never done b4!
Rating:
Summary: What was the point again?
Review: This often disturbing, sometimes funny book is getting rave reviews and I don't really understand why. It was ok, but not outstanding, not even especially unique for a memoir of abuse. Definitely sad, ...in some places. However, just plain embarrassing in others. Everyone has a story, some more tragic than others, and Augusten's is just one of many sad stories of growing up neglected, confused and abused in the 70's. His sense of humor seems sharp, if misplaced, which I'm sure is part of what helped him survive his ordeals. The people I've known who seem to have overcome severe childhood abuse tend to have a well honed sense of the absurd which lends to their comic awareness. They are usually both sarcastic and self deprecating. Often they are hysterically funny. And I guess Augusten is no exception aside from the fact that I didn't think he was hysterically funny. The book was sometimes interesting, but sometimes I wondered what the point was.
...
Although I wasn't impressed with the content as much as the reviewers seem to be, I did think the writing itself was well done and engaging. His portrayal of his mother was captivating. While I was amazed at his ability to remember all the obscure references she makes, I was appreciative of his ability to describe the major conflict for all time - the adoration and loathing toward a parent. He almost lovingly describes the way she would eat caulking and paint chips... he tenderly describes the frailty of the woman who obviously suffered on the brink of insanity - and then like a skilled surgeon, he cuts through the soft tissue with a razor sharpness - exposing her most neurotic moments with a raw brutality that not only shocks, but also makes me wonder exposing his mother is what the book is really all about. I am not defending the mother or anything she may have done. Augusten was abused, and she was the abuser. He was surrounded by abusers and in fact became one himself. However, writing about it, poking fun at it, doesn't make it less hideous. It certainly doesn't make it bearable or okay. I guess what I feel everyone else is missing is that while Augusten portrays himself as a victim; he also portrays himself as a smart player in what goes on around him. Survival instinct? For sure. Do I blame him? Of course not! It's just not something I would want to tell the world about - there is no revelation, no epiphany, no absolution or enlightenment for anyone in the story, including Augusten ... and so I don't find his story amazing, or very funny, which is what the critics seem to be saying about it. I wouldn't buy it, and I won't reread it. However I might read the next installment, about Augusten's foray into alcoholism, if only to see if he ever gets real in it. I guess maybe that's what I was looking for - for Augusten's reality, not a caricaturization of what happened to him.
Rating:
Summary: Growing up is not easy
Review: Many of us think our family is strange; however Burroughs trumps most of our claims easily in his memories of growing up. The cast of characters he presents here could fill several books by many other authors, and refreshingly the author is not necessarily the sanest of them all. The book begins with Burroughs as a compulsive clean freak with obsessions about hair and clothes that help insulate him from the world around. Yet as he's thrown into the mix with Dr. Finch and his family, the walls come down and he begins to embrace, if not thrive on the chaos around him. The book is told not in a "oh pity me for what I went through" voice - rather it's more of a story over beer showing how messed up the world can be. As noted by other reviews, he sometimes does go into "Too Much Information" land, but it's not so much lurid details as just more facts to support the craziness around. This is a story of a young man who is far from perfect, but who works with what life gave him, and comes out of it strong. A very enjoyable and fascinating look into the adolescence of one man.
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