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My Misspent Youth: Essays
 
 
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My Misspent Youth: Essays (Paperback)

~ (Author) "It started in cold weather; fall was drifting away into an intolerable chill..." (more)
Key Phrases: Morning Glory, New York, Music Is My Bag (more...)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Essay lovers can take heart. There's a new voice in the fray, and it belongs to a talented young writer. In this collection of (largely previously published) on-target analyses of American culture, Daum offers the disapproval of youth, leavened with pithy humor and harsh self-appraisal . In each essay, she sustains interest with a good story and pricks the reader's conscience with observations that reverberate personally, whether about the secret desires of Christian women or the stunning ease of accumulating debt while existing unluxuriously in New York City. Publishing veterans will be amused and chagrined to see their profession skewered in "Publishing and Other Near-Death Experiences"; and for a hard take on one's responsibility for mourning, there is the book's best work, "Variation on Grief." Daum's decidedly agnostic outlook sometimes makes for easy moral outs, and time may render her phrasings cute. While her main premise that many Americans live "not actual lives but simulations of lives... via the trinkets on our shelves" leaves room for disagreement, on the whole, readers will enjoy an edgy read. (Mar. 15) Forecast: Daum's pieces have appeared in traditional magazines like the New Yorker, as well as in cutting-edge venues like Nerve, and have earned her a considerable reputation as a sharp Gen-X voice. Review attention and good word-of-mouth should earn this book brisk sales.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal

This eclectic collection of essays delves into the corners of contemporary life, ferreting out the eccentric as well as the ordinary. Readers can identify with Daum's disdain for carpeting or her difficulty living within her means on New York's Upper West Side while working at a low-paying publishing job. On a less familiar note is an essay exploring the lifestyle of a group in California who call their communal way of life "polyamory," a brand of free love reminiscent of the 1960s. Not shy about implicating herself, Daum plunges into such thorny issues as an Internet romance and her inability to mourn a friend's death, along with her irritation at his superficial, enabling parents. A regular contributor to National Public Radio, Daum writes essays and articles appearing in major publications including The New Yorker, Harper's, New York Times, GQ, Self, and Vogue. Her work demonstrates honesty and an ability to look perceptively at herself and contemporary life. Daum's is a provocative and refreshing new voice. Recommended for larger public libraries. Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 180 pages
  • Publisher: Grove Press, Open City Books (March 15, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1890447269
  • ISBN-13: 978-1890447267
  • Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #89,770 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Meghan Daum
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
It started in cold weather; fall was drifting away into an intolerable chill. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Morning Glory, New York, Music Is My Bag, New Jersey, Los Angeles, San Francisco, American Airlines, Baby Drowsy, Billy Joel, United States, Amy Grant, Mia Farrow, Church of All Worlds, Eleanor Rigby, Mythic Images, Woody Allen
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Customer Reviews

24 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Read this book in bits..., March 21, 2002
By Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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Meghan Daum is undoubtedly a skilled writer. She has a keen eye, when she uses it. She is also arrogant, a bit of a snob and very very young.

I've been enjoying her essays in various magazines for some time now, and I was interested to learn that there is a collection of her writing, so I bought the book. As I started to read, I discovered that the essays started to run together in my mind. I was occasinally stopped short by her arrogance. When I read one essay at a time, these things did not happen, and I could go back to enjoying the fluently written, nicely observed essays about not much of anything. On the other hand, when I read them in a group, the weaknesses were more evident and the effect more of a whine.

So, my advice is that if you like this kind of thing (smooth writing, essays making much of very little), you may well enjoy this book. I just urge you not to take the edge off by reading it all at once.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars you must buy this book, May 7, 2002
By A Customer
meghan daum is scarily perceptive, outrageously talented, and ridiculously funny. I read the essays in one afternoon and haven't stopped thinking about them since. Though other reviewers found her arrogant, i think they are mistaking her honesty for snobbery, and her obvious intelligence for disdain. Yes, she makes fun of other people (carpet owners, sci-fi geeks, and high school musicians in particular) but gets away with it because she allows us glimpses into her own carpet-owning, sci-fi-reading, oboe-playing geeky soul. If you think personal essays have to either be truncated memoirs or shrill polemics, read this book and enjoy the form at its finest.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Rising Star, March 27, 2001
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After reading just one essay by Meghan Daum when it first appeared in The New Yorker, coincidentally the title piece of MY MISSPENT YOUTH, I wanted more, more, more of her prose. So I was understandably thrilled when a recent web search turned up this first collection of her work and, having read it, I am even more thrilled. She is really, really good. She's so good, she's scary. Daum's pieces share in common what she calls a point, which someone else bent on stuffy superlatives might call an overarching theme. Either way, she's not imposing some pat formula on life but has pulled out a bona fide truth about the human condition in its many different circumstances, that we simultaneously operate in two worlds, one a concoction of dreams, prejudices and cultural conditioning, the other, reality. Each of her essays is a moment of reckoning, of understanding how the imagined world has tipped the real one, of having to bow to the real one. In unflinching prose that just sweeps along, she pursues truth as a player, occasionally as a witness. The quality of her work reminds me of what Carol Burnett said about having no choice but to become the star because she was a misfit in the chorus: Daum, incapable of following through on requests that she submit to puppy mill essaying on Gen-X preoccupations (she's about 31), has positioned herself in the territory of Joan Didion and our finest cultural commentators.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book of essays
I received the book quickly and try to read an essay an evening. Very good book!
Published 8 months ago by Barbara J. Williams

4.0 out of 5 stars Reflections on lives as simulations
In this highly autobiographical and entertaining collection of essays, the author offers insight into American culture that both informs and questions. Read more
Published 12 months ago by J. Grattan

3.0 out of 5 stars Good writer, but not really self-aware in these essays
Daum is a really really good writer. Her essay on the ease of acquiring debt in NYC is spot on, even ten years later. However, I found the rest of the essays quite pointless. Read more
Published 13 months ago by C. R. Morgan

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid collection
I'm a big fan of these short essay, memoirish type collections, so I enjoyed these pieces quite a bit. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Billy Pilgrim

4.0 out of 5 stars Tortured Pleasure
Having purchased this book based upon an Amazon rec, I spent the first chapter cursing Meghan Daum and Jeff Bezos. Read more
Published on October 31, 2006 by Elizabeth

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent writing
So often you read a highly recommended book, even an award-winning book, and it stinks. This is why I generally read 19th century fiction.... Read more
Published on October 22, 2003 by Kate Smart

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth will set you free
I found MY MISSPENT YOUTH almost too painful to read. Thankfully I stuck with her wonderfully written essays and can say I'm a better man for it. Read more
Published on July 10, 2003

2.0 out of 5 stars oh stinky
Don't waste your time with this dreck. go get Dan Zevin's "The Day I Turned Uncool: Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-up."
Published on September 16, 2002 by Jodi Chromey

5.0 out of 5 stars My relationship with Meghan
I fell in love with Meghan while reading her book but our love was short-lived, as I'm not compatible with Meghan for reasons you can guess while turning these pages. Read more
Published on July 18, 2002 by Paul H. Rich

3.0 out of 5 stars Talented arrogance
Ms. Daum is very, very good. And hopefully living in Nebraska will help make her even better. There are times in this book she hits on so on the head it's scary; there are... Read more
Published on January 14, 2002

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