Augusten Burroughs doesn't hate Christmas. But he thinks he may be a magnet for holiday calamity.

``It's this odd thing,'' says the author of the bestselling memoirs Running With Scissors, Dry and A Wolf at the Table. ``I love Christmas, but each one is horrible.''

You can see what he means in You Better Not Cry (St. Martin's, $21.99), a collection of horror stories that includes such nightmares as getting pencils in your stocking (perfect for poking out an eardrum at school), waking up next to Santa (not as much fun as it sounds) and a flooded house on the night he got his first adult tree (feel free to cry after that one).

We talked to Burroughs about the holidays and why they drive him crazy.

So have they gotten any better over the years?

``No! The next two Christmases [after the book ends] were horrible, too. My dog become paralyzed in the middle of the night and had to have awful invasive surgery that required me moving onto an air mattress in the basement and sleeping with the dog between my legs so he couldn't move. And he was incontinent in all possible ways.''

What's the worst gift you ever got?

``A world time desk blotter with three clocks built in, from my father. First of all, a blotter? . . . This is horrible, but when my father's presents started to arrive when I was 18 or 20 and had my own apartment, I'd open them in the trash room of my building. I would look at them and say something like, `Oh, look, a snow globe that is also a pill holder!' and then they would go straight into the chute. I opened them right there and then threw them away, wrappings and all.''

What was the best gift?

``It was sort of the best gift, then it turned into the most horrible thing. I got a large glass aquarium. It had fish in it for awhile, but then I had a guinea pig in it. My dad was supposed to watch it when we were away, but he didn't, and the guinea pig died in it.''

Are you a good gift giver?

``I'm good when I bother with it. I'm bad at remembering things, but my presents suit the person well. They may come at any time, though. I'm not patient. I'm like my mom. In probably 1987, my mother was living in Mexico, and I was in San Francisco, and she sent me a box for Christmas in, like, June, with weird things like dried locust shells.''

So you're not that person who has all his shopping done before Halloween?

``I wish I could be that person! I have no organizational skills at all. And you know, we need those people in the world. How else would we have electricity? If it were up to me we wouldn't even have fire. I wouldn't have wanted to get my hands dirty by rubbing two sticks together.''

-- CONNIE OGLE

Meet Augusten Burroughs 8 p.m. Friday at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables. Free tickets available at Books & Books locations; get priority seating if you buy a copy of You Better Not Cry.

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