Augusten Burroughs, sounds familiar, oh yeah that's right, William Burroughs. Did Augusta choose to use a nom de plume because his real name has a direct correlation to Winnie-The-Pooh? Let me guess,  he choose Burroughs because he too is gay and wrote a shock novel similar to Naked Lunch like Willy B.?

Augusten isn't quite as revolutionary for his time as William nor is his best friend Jack Kerouac, but then again Running With Scissors has a clear story line, a welcome difference from Naked Lunch. Running with Scissors is a memoir of Augusten Burroughs (Christopher Robison). It intimately describes his life growing up and how far it fell from the norm. It is a fun read if you really enjoy setting the book down every 20 minutes, looking up at the sky in retrospect at what you just read and saying "what the fuck!" Would I recommend reading it -- maybe. I would classify it as the Jersey Shore of novels; nothing revolutionary or mind bending, but you just can't turn away from watching the characters with their skewed sense of reality and themselves.