Running With Scissors is a great book. The author's writing style is fantastic, so much so that the words just draw you in. Little effort is required on your part to get into the story, the words just leap off the page. An example of this would be near the beginning when he was cleaning the pennies, that scene sticks out in my mind for some reason as an example of his writing style.
The story over all is great though. The story is about this young boy whose mother gives him to her shrink to live with because she feels she's too psychologically unwell to take care of him. The shrink's family is very eccentric and almost dysfunctional.
The characterization was amazingly well done and the odd idiosyncrasies of the family Augusten had to live with were hilarious. Not too odd so as to seem contrived for the sole purpose of being 'weird', but odd enough to mirror the reality that we're all weird, some more dramatically than others, but this is why its so fun, yes?
I smiled while reading this book, smiled out loud! I might even have chuckled here and there. It is definitely higher up on my list of books to recommend to friends.
I love this movie. It's about a guy who owns a shoe factory, but the shoe factory is about to go under, so he strikes a bargain with this cross-dresser names Lola to make high heeled boots for men. Lola's such a flamboyant character and stands up to all of the crap people give her and keeps on going. She has such a strength of character that I guess I want to see from someone facing such adversity. Gender identity is such a delicate issue and I'm glad that there are such main stream movies as this that address the issue. It's a really touching movie and its both feel good and sad... if that makes sense, but I enjoy watching it every time its on.
This book addressed many issues and should be read by all young girls with questions. Especially at a time when talking about sex in a positive way and introducing sex and sexual relationships properly is so important. Sadly not many people, that I know of at least, get down to the bare bones of sex and sexual relationships with young girls and alot of these girls are left with no one but their peers to talk to about the issues they are stuggling with in their lives, both sexual and with relationships. Parents may not readily discuss their child's sex life in a positive light, or at all to their child, leaving the media and their peers to educate them (because lets be honest, they don't learn anything in school other than the basic biology, which won't help them physically or emotionally). How are the young girls of today supposed to know how to react to certain situations if they have no knowledge of possible ways to act. People were meant to have sex, there won't be any stopping of that, but we can provide our girls with the knowledge of safe sex and healthy relationships. In some other reviews I was reading, some people didn't like this book because it promoted homosexuality. Of course my usual response to this is welcome to the 2000's where we're attempting to stop hating people for sexual preference, but beyond social structure, the fact that homosexuality is mentioned in a book about sexuality doesn't mean that homosexuality is being forced upon the reader. What discussing homosexuality does is #1, includes homosexuals in the education process, because no one deserves to be abused, and #2 it (hopefully not for the first time) introduces homosexuality to those who are heterosexual and will perhaps allow them to not fear homosexuality, but embrace the people that are homosexuals, for there is no difference between hetero and homosexuals, except to whom they give their love.
