My Misspent Youth: Essays | 
so-soDang, Meghan Daum, you probably should've checked yourself before you wrecked yourself. It sounds like she hasn't found her writing voice yet. There are a couple good essays, but most come across as privileged white ppl problems. She makes many pessimistic, condescending generalizations about how she perceives the world, but her judgments are unnecessary. Also, some stuff in here sounds racist to my ears. The audiobook narrator is stellar, though.
8little_paws Oh darn. I read her other essay collection, the unspeakable, and where there was one "miss" in there, I thought there were a lot of "hits" as well. 8y
BookishFeminist @8little_paws I've yet to read that one & plan to, but I've heard it's much better than this after looking through reviews. 8y
8little_paws @BookishFeminist I believe this was written like, 10 years before the unspeakable, so maybe a maturity difference. 8y
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Dorianna Personally, Daum just rubs me the wrong way about 50% of the time. I fully admit that I can't always explain why though. 8y
Notafraidofwords She rubbed me the wrong way in some of the essays in The Unspeakable. However, I appreciated her honesty in many ways. 8y
BookishFeminist @8little_paws I definitely think it is. This was published in 2001 originally. 8y
BookishFeminist @Dorianna Yea, I'm the same way, except I can usually figure out what's rubbing me the wrong way. Her generalizing bothers me a lot. She's condescending about it. But she's also not a great writer so there's nothing well articulated to back up that condescension. I find a lot of her ideas are unfinished- she makes odd links between things but never fully explains these links or does the self examination to make her viewpoints less shallow. 8y
BookishFeminist @Notafraidofwords I do appreciate her honesty but I'd love her sit her down and challenge her for a while over coffee. She says some super problematic stuff. 😬 I find her opinions aren't rooted in much logic either- I find she generalizes & stretches to find links between things to back up her judgments. But they're weak links so her judgments remain shallow and condescending. 8y
Notafraidofwords @BookishFeminist yeah I totally agree. Her strongest essays were the ones in which she didn't generalize. 8y
BookishFeminist @Notafraidofwords I'm curious and want to read The Unspeakable. There were a couple tolerable essays in this collection and I'm hoping the tolerable ones will be the majority in The Unspeakable. 8y
Notafraidofwords @BookishFeminist yeah I think so. I must say sometimes her representations of minority folks are not always pleasant. 8y
BookishFeminist @Notafraidofwords Yea, definitely. That's an understatement. She literally had a whole essay in this collection about how she only wanted to date and eventually marry Jewish men because of lots of generalized stereotypes about them, and she enjoyed feeling like a forbidden fruit. 😯🙅🏻🙅🏻🙅🏻 like no, that's racist. 8y
Notafraidofwords Ahhh. That's so off the rocker. 8y
BookishFeminist @Notafraidofwords Yep, it is. Glad I didn't buy this! 8y
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