I talked a while back about how it I had gone to Half Price Books two or three times and each time could not find even one audiobook I was interested in. Well, the last time I went I basically was searching for anything I could get my hands on and ended up with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and this book, Running With Scissors. I'd heard of both and knew that this book was a New York Times Bestseller and it had been adapted into a movie. I read the back of the book cover and it read like the memoir of a man who grew up in a highly dysfunctional family. Immediately I thought of The Glass Castle. I love The Glass Castle, it's become one of my favorite books and if you haven't read it yet...well, you can probably guess that I highly recommend it. It's essentially about the dysfunctional life of Jeannette Walls while she was growing up. Highly dysfunctional, yet an excellent story and Walls' writing style is spectacular.
As you can imagine, I figured Running With Scissors would at least be somewhat similar. Maybe, not as good of a story, but some healthy dysfunction providing entertainment along the way. After all, it too was highly popular. Why else would it have been a New York Times Bestseller?
Yea...not so much. I have to say that this book is AWFUL. And I mean aaaaaaaaaaaawful. Augusten Burroughs does have a peculiar writing style that I enjoyed, but when you're not enjoying the story itself, what good does that do for you? Let me tell you, this book makes the family in The Glass Castle look like the Brady Bunch. There's a lot of highly graphic scenes as well as lots of foul language. I have to say that the only reason I made it through this is book is because it was an audiobook. Audiobooks just kinda keep going and a lot of times they do make it easier to breeze through more boring books. If I'd had this book in paper form I would have never finished it.I do not recommend this book nor do I have any intentions of seeing the film version, which oddly enough, has a pretty nice cast. Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kristen Chenoweth... My guess is it's probably like most other star-cast movies. A flop.
Two very unenthusiastic thumbs DOWN!
The Glass Castle is one of my fav books!
ReplyDeleteYour layout is one of my all time favs!
You need to read Half Broke Horses now! You'll love it too!
ReplyDeleteThanks Nicole! And Becky, I already have it-it's sitting on my dresser waiting patiently for me to read it! :)
ReplyDeleteRWS was so bad that when I asked my mom to borrow it for our book club assignment, she had to look really hard. She said she hid it for fear that someone would see it in her house.
ReplyDelete