I talk about this all the time, so here, definitively, is my explanation of the four categories of memoir.

1) People who have had seriously interesting / crazy lives, and who also happen to be terrific writers, able to render their stories in a compelling, original way (like David Small's brilliant Stitches, or what I consider the gold-standard memoir, Nick Flynn's breathtaking Another Bullshit Night in Suck City).

2) People whose lives are interesting / crazy enough that it really doesn't matter how well they write, because theirs will necessarily be a compelling, original book just based on subject matter (like the bonkers I Am Not Myself These Days, about the accountant-by-day, drag-queen-by-night, who wears fishbowls for boobs and lives with a crack-addicted boyfriend; or, yes, Running With Scissors).

3) Really brilliant writers who can turn a "normal" life into an utterly fascinating read (like Sloane Crosley or Alison Bechdel or Lynn Barber or — fuck off, haters — Dave Eggers).

4) Idiot people who don't write particularly well and who have more or less "regular" lives, but whose inflated sense of self leads them to write memoirs anyway.

Right? Any memoir you read goes into one of those categories.

Anyway, about this book: I totally liked it, but I feel kind of lied to, having seen the movie first. In the movie, everything was just reelingly insane, but so over-the-top that it was funny, and also it was light, somehow, and sort of fun. In the book, though, it's all so much darker, and it made me feel kind of awful for having found the movie to be so clever and cool.

I Cannot Believe That Any of That Was Real.

…this was the most unassumingly disturbing book I’ve ever read.

Boring Prose sprinkled with the kind of sensationalism that can only come from a man with the hubris to change his name from Chris Robinson to Augusten Xon Burroughs.

I wanted this to be a one-sentence review, because that's all it deserves, but I just can't: XON!!!??? FUCKING XON!!!???? WHERE IS MY GODDAMN INTERROBANG!!!!????? JUST CALL YOURSELF XENU FOR SHIT'S SAKE. CHRISTING FUCKBELLY TURDSQUABBLE.

Thrilled to be done with all of this dysfunction.

3 stars.

I found the book a bit of an eye roll at times and felt the author engaged in too much catharsis. It is some difficult subject matter to be sure.

Now I certainly can’t judge the veracity of the situations depicted in this memoir and there are some readers who are dubious about the assertions in the story. Assuming everything written in the memoir is true then I would have liked to see it better structured and much more reflective. With the passage of time, the author should be able to analyze his own feelings and recognize what was wrong with certain situations. Instead the reader is left to sort out all the crazy actions that went down and as such there isn’t really anyone to root for.

I didn’t love the graphic scenes in the book, but I also didn’t mark down the book for its apparent honesty. I simply think the story telling here needed some work.

Ok, so I did enjoy this author's writing style very much, the story of his childhood is a page-turner with some very cringe worthy moments. This is not a book for the faint of heart. It has some extremely vulgar parts and many of the people he writes about are off their rocker. There were moments at the beginning of the book that I didn't think I would make it, but I kept going and I'm glad I did. If you are easily offended or highly religious, this is NOT the book for you. If you grew up with dysfunction and a mentally ill family member, you may relate to this memoir.

What a weird book. I read this after reading his brother's memoir Look Me in the Eye, which I really liked. But this one was far from endearing. His brother is a blip in this book - maybe a whole paragraph’s worth of mentions. This one is full of triggers, and it's so sad. Somehow, the author seems well-adjusted by the epilogue, but if I'd had his childhood, I think I'd be pretty screwed up for life.

If you only have time for one of these books, I recommend Look Me in the Eye over this one. This one is a bit dark and also weird. The things that happened to him and his mom were tragic and weird. I can't think of another word for it.

This book made me nostalgic for the Pioneer Valley, where I went to college and for Friendly's, where I worked in high school as a fountain girl (I made everyone's ice cream sundaes).

Think I'd like to see the movie version of this.

I began this memoir only knowing that it was controversial -- some of the people depicted in these pages claim that Burroughs greatly embellished past events, while Burroughs himself maintains the book's veracity. After doing some online research, I still can't determine who's telling the truth here, and so I can only judge the book's literary merit.

And in that regard I have to say that Running with Scissors lives up to its hype. Burroughs' prose is crisp, his descriptions memorable -- e.g., "My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron.” At times I felt unsettled by his decision to discuss incredibly dark subjects -- namely, child abuse and molestation -- in such a comedic, nonchalant manner. But looking back now, I think this was the right decision, as this juxtaposition heightened my feelings of discomfort; I don't think this same effect would have been achieved had he gone with a more somber approach.

All in all, I found this to be an extraordinarily powerful reading experience. I finished the book several hours ago and still feel upset, disturbed, a little depressed. Again, it's not clear to me if this is more memoir than novel, but I don't think there can be any doubt that Augusten Burroughs knows how to write.

You ever see a Tiktok that is just really strange and it leaves you thinking, "What did I just watch?". That's how I feel about this book. What did I just read?

I really liked this. Burroughs has a great voice, his narration was perfect for this. These stories were funny, along with being kinda messed up. I will have to check out more of his work.

I hated this book. It lacked direction and had coarse language "just because." I was not impressed or amused. And I could have lived the rest of my life not knowing the other uses of hair conditioning pomade, thank you very much, Mr. Burroughs.