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Running with Scissors

A Memoir

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Running with Scissors

Written by: Augusten Burroughs
Narrated by: Augusten Burroughs
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The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir from Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors, now a Major Motion Picture!

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs....

Running with Scissors is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it chronicles an ordinary boy's survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.

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What the critics say

“Running with Scissors is a bawdy, outrageous, often hilarious account...some of this story might have been imagined by William Burroughs...In keeping with this book's dauntless comic timing, this guy doesn't miss a beat.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“... hilarious, freaky-deaky, berserk, controlled, transcendent, touching, affectionate, vengeful, all-embracing. It makes you happy that there's such a thing in the world as a string of written words.” —Carolyn See, The Washington Post

“Beautifully written with a finely tuned sense of style and wit...this memoir of a nightmarish youth is both compulsively entertaining and tremendously provocative.” —Publishers Weekly

“Ever woder what it might be like to grow up in a lunatic asylum run by the lunatics? Augusten Burroughs' hilarious and horrifying memoir, Running with Scissors, tells the story...” —Los Angeles Times
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entertaining for sure
Started the book then got the audible.
memoirs read by their authors are my favorite.

loved it

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Interesting read. Serious but yet humorous. If you need a reality check for how good we all have it. Take a read, there’s always someone who has it worse off

The truth always finds a way out

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Before I began writing nonfiction, friends would listen to my stories and say, “You should write a book!” But I thought of myself as an unbelievable character. Then I read Running with Scissors. This was the first memoir I ever read that made me think that I too could write about myself and my life. This book was my inspiration. Listening to it years after reading it, I still loved it.

An inspiration

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