Running With Scissors: A Memoir

[anthony]

I'm going to have to go rent this movie this weekend... so Nicolette can see how much of a crackup it is.

 

[Mercy]

The idea though is to look at more angles than just your own... what you choose to take from them, all your choice.

See the connection to healing trauma in book club?

I'm trying. I understand that trauma can make for rigid thinking and even a kind of blind thinking where it is impossible to see the world differently. I can also understand and be prepared for being triggered. Why else try this?.

Please try again to help me make the connection to healing trauma and the reading we are doing. Maybe I'm slower than I thought....

 

[anthony]

It isn't the book, it is the varying opinions on how a specific is viewed by different people, then opening yourself up to see something that you didn't see yourself.

 

[Mercy]

Got it. Thank you, Anthony.

 

[KP the nut]

I finished it and it has left me wanting to know more. I will definitely read more of his books. Oh dear, so many books and so little money ;).

I almost cheered when his Mum told him about the rape and how she had realised she had been controlled for so many years. I believe that was the catalyst Augusten needed to move out on his own.

 

[kers]

I read this a few years ago and it was both hilarious and heartbreaking. I found it a very black humor, as opposed to, say, slapstick. Burroughs has obviously found that coping through humor works with his temperament--ie, if you don't laugh, you'll cry. Had I lived his experience, I'd doubt I'd find much humor in it, but I think he finds great power in casting his story in this way.

I've also read his book Dry (about his alcoholism) and A Wolf at the Table (about his father), which were both good. I think sometimes he falls in love with his story a bit and this makes them work out better as "stories," but I don't object to it; that's the nature of memoir.

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone read his brother's book about growing up with Asperger's--Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I saw the movie today. I was not liking it. I think the book is probably better.

 

[Mercy]

I like the part where they all move out on to the front lawn for the summer......Maybe this is more like" The Addams Family" kind of humor. That took me a while to get. Thanks.

 

[anthony]

I saw the movie today. I was not liking it. I think the book is probably better.

Yer, watched the movie the other night. Nicolette didn't like it, but I didn't mind it. Obviously the book was better, much more detailed... though I think one also has to read the back of the DVD to read it is a comedic drama, which otherwise may not be interpreted in the movie.

Book said things better... hands down.

 

[KP the nut]

Which is why I prefer reading the book first.

 

[piratelady]

I haven't been able to find as much time to devote to this book as I'd like, but I finally got back to it today. I have to say it is hilarious...and yet so sad. I'm still towards the beginning of the book where they were taking their trash to the dump..and his parents got into a fight. I can't imagine growing up in a home with so much fighting.

 

[KP the nut]

Keep going piratelady, I thought it got better as it went on and I enjoyed it from the start.