Rating: 
Summary: Feed your mind
Review: If you have a functioning brain and a sense of humor and a few extra dollars, buy this book. Then read it.
Rating:
Summary: you must buy this book
Review: 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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Summary: Read this book in bits...
Review: 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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Summary: A cross between Alain de Botton and Helen Fielding
Review: Meghan Daum's essays are honest, spot-on and filled with insight into the angst and anxieties and humor that riddle the lives of thirty-somethings in the major NYC area---or any major metro area for that matter. At times she is a little too bitter, jaded, judgmental and angry (like some my friends pre-therapy!) but ultimately the humor always shines through...I cant wait for more, she is spot-on, a real find.... Brava!
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Summary: Talented arrogance
Review: 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 laugh-out-loud moments, so rare to find. But her irritating moments are SO offensive as to almost (not quite, but almost) negate the good. Ms. Daum is extraordinarily arrogant, and more than a bit of a hypocrite. Yes, she is self-depracating and "points the finger at herself" and all that other good-flap-copy crap. She is indeed...too obviously so. The self-finger-pointing tends to read as something she went back on the 2nd or 3rd draft and entered because she was worried she sounded too arrogant. Hmmm. Her essay on the polys was damn good, almost brilliant, until the last paragraph when her final conclusion was so hypocritical (jn the face of her previous essays) as to make me groan. Anyway, get the book; it's mostly good. But I think Ms. Daum will be much, much better after she's been around the block a few times.
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Summary: She is a goddess
Review: Picked this up randomly and by the end, I could safely declare myself a rabid fan. These essays are scenes from a life not unlike mine, told with wit and insight that are both startling and unsettling. Daum writes with an honesty that manages to be enchanting and embarassing all at once. MY MISSPENT YOUTH is wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent writing
Review: 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....but along comes Meghan Daum and what a refreshing discovery. She is an excellent writer - clear, direct, authoritative, and very funny. It's strange in a way, to be reading about my own generation from one of its members. Her recollections of the 80's made me laugh out loud. And the essay about carpet was brilliant - I felt as though it had been written about me. She puts into words so many ideas, thoughts, and feeling that I have had but could never properly articulate. It seems that the Generation X'ers are finally getting a chance on the stage. I hope she writes about the insufferable arrogance of the baby-boomers.
Rating: 
Summary: It was okay
Review: The essays were decent, closely observed, but all in all, a waste of time, both mine and Ms. Daum's.
Rating:
Summary: A stunning, brilliant book
Review: There is something wonderfully vindicating about reading Meghan Daum's essays, which is why I've read many of them three or four times. She pinpoints so many of the lies we tell ourselves and each other, combining brutal honesty with graceful, witty prose. A fascinating and compelling read.
Rating: 
Summary: Light and Refreshing
Review: These aren't the most challenging essays out there, bu tthey are a fun read. They take advantage of the burgeoning new field known as "creative nonfiction" which has in some corners turned out lots of memoirs; in some others: books like this. Thank goodness for that other corner!
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