Book & Movie review: Running with Scissors

Firstly I just have to show off my new bookmark, it's called a book thong and is basically a piece of string with a few beads dangling at either end of it.


I saw one at Borders bookstore and thought that it was a clever idea but at a ridiculous $14 there was no way I was buying one. I dragged out my beading bag and hey presto, 1 personal book thong for zippo using some left over beads. And here it is doing what it was created for:


Now onto my review. I actually managed to read and then watch the movie based on the book and I'm rather shocked to say that the movie was better then the book.

Running with Scissors is a memoir of Augusten Burrows, simply put that poor man had a very strange upbringing and I can see how he thought it would make a good book. My personal memoir would be boring and on the never ever to be published list! His mother was mentally unbalanced and rather selfish, his father seemed to give up on his odd family in the first few pages and his new adopted family was simply "way out there", like when people whisper to each other, "these people heads are in space... obviously on drugs...not all there...certainly not normal". I almost gave up on the book half way through, but I battled on as I wanted to know what happened to poor Augusten. Well his alive and kicking and seems to have moved on from the experiences of his youth - good for your Augusten!

The movie, had me at a lot of "huh?", "what?", "that's not in the book" and I even check the book twice to see if I missed pages. I've seen movies in my time and movies based on books, and generally they try to capture the story line but miss crucial parts even omit chapters, but to change it completely was a first for me and that is what I felt between the book and it's movie. Yes there was a boy, his mother and his odd adopted family but so many characters were missing, he had a brother - poof gone, One daughter came across as a total loon in the movie, not so in the book, there was also another 2 daughter's in the book - poof gone. But even with all the missing characters it was an easy to watch movie, I doubt I would have watched it if I had not read the book.

I don't think I would recommend either to anyone but each to their own and it could not have been a best seller if everyone thought it was as crap as I did.