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Jan 19, 2012

Cathy rated it:

I enjoyed this book, even though I found the author's attitudes sometimes appalling, sometimes a little too close to home. Meghan Daum, a columnist for the LA Times and a commentator on NPR, writes in exhaustive detail about her many moves and her real estate obsession. I heard her interviewed around the time the book came out, so I knew the gist of the story. As a fellow Gen Xer and cross-country mover, I can relate to the idea that for this generation, where you live says a lot about who you a More...

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Oct 14, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

<After> An enjoyable outing from Megham Daum! I liked her style and I liked being inside her head, though a bit more connection between her tale and broader social problems (i.e., the mass real estate hysteria and why that was) would have been good.

<Before> Megham Daum spoke at Salem College earlier this week, and now her memoir is the first library book I've checked out via Kindle! Time to get reading....

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Dec 11, 2011

Evelyn rated it:

If you're interested in real estate and/or home decorating porn, you'll likely find this book amusing. The author, who grew up with parents who believed that moving was the best way to change your life if you were unhappy, also learned from her parents that the most reliable way to obscure your lower middle class origins and to become, somehow, magically transformed into a sophisticate, was to decorate your home in a way that transmitted who you wished you were rather than what you actually were More...

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Aug 05, 2011

Kristen rated it:

I read Daum's essay collection, "My Misspent Youth," and marveled at our similarities, as she dissected the nuances of high school band culture, and the ramifications of labeling and conveying oneself as a shiksa in small-town America, across a number of extremely funny essays. In this book, Daum proposes to examine the obsession with house ownership, which again seemed to fall right in line with my current worldview--having bought my first house less than 2 years ago, I have watched m More...

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Jul 07, 2011

Nick rated it:

I suspect that I liked this perfectly fluffy book so much because I probably want to be Meghan Daum's friend. It's very funny and very clever. It is the rare piece of fiction, or in this case, memoir, that can entertain me without being heavy on dialogue, which this one isn't. Instead, it's a long series of Daum's musings about her own (and by extension, our culture's) obsession with real estate and what we think it can do for us and say about us. And it is, at every turn, incredibly lucid a More...

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Aug 18, 2010

Kate rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Aug 09, 2010

K2 rated it:

You gotta love a book that makes you laugh out loud and has you search for the author's other books upon completion.

Meghan Daum, a columnist for the LA Times and a commentator on NPR, has the ability to laugh at her real estate obsession. She takes you along for the ride on her many life time moves and a past where her family was always striving for something different throughout her childhood. She pokes fun at her own neurosis and has a delightful writing style.

In her m More...

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Jul 19, 2010

Susan rated it:

Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House is the funniest, wittiest book I have read in a very long time. Briskly entertaining and nearly pitch-perfect, Meghan Daum's memoir is the story of her decades-long obsession with unaffordable apartments in New York, unmanageable farms in Nebraska, and houses (suitable and un-) in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It is also the story of too many of us, people whose lives are defined by media-spun dreams of high-class, high-priced, high-maintenance houses More...

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Jul 18, 2010

Amy rated it:

I loved the title of this book! I too, have moved a lot....although I lived in the same house the first 18 years of my life, in my five years of college I lived in two dormrooms and six apartments, with a total of more than 15 roommates. In my mid-twenties I had five more roommates, two apartments and two townhomes. I moved to Chicago in my late 20's, and in my two years there I lived in an apartment, and then bought a house (all with the same person). Then it was off for a two-year stint in More...

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May 23, 2010

Chris rated it:

In "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House," Meghan Daum recounts her search for a living space that would allow her to feel at home. In part, she declares, that quest has to do with houses, "ones I've lived in and ones I haven't, ones I've lusted for, ones I've reviled, ones I've left too soon, and ones where I've found myself stuck, chained to my own radiator by the tethers of my own stupid decisions." Yet as she moves in and out of temporary residences, never quite More...

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May 16, 2010

Carolyn rated it:

This book is a wonderful confessional for a house-a-holics anonymous, if there was such a thing. Coping with the addiction myself, I found the book not so much revelatory as relatable. No, I haven't had the compulsion to continually move like the author did, but I certainly find myself surfing the MLS listings when I'm not in the market to buy and studying the shelter magazines ad nauseam. If you've ever fantasized about living in that certain house down to how you'd decorate and furnish it, or More...

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Mar 10, 2011

Glenn rated it:

Very boring. At one point the author talks about booting a male roommate named Brad out of a New York City apartment, partly because he "recounted his college days in excrutiating--and mind-numbing--detail." That sums up how I felt while plodding through this memoir. Like the author stating that "Brad grew both more irritated and more irritating by the day.", I grew more irritated page by page. It was almost like reading 30+ years of selected mundane Facebook postings. e.g. S More...

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May 11, 2010

Ronit rated it:

Funny, wry and heartfelt, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House is not your typical addiction memoir. There are no drugs, decidedly no sex, and too many references to Suzanne Vega to evoke the crude impulse of rock 'n roll. But Daum’s hilarious retelling of her real estate obsession is as compelling as any binge book. Her story begins with a glance back at her mother, who used her skills at interior design as a means of escaping her rural roots—eventually leading her to purchase a small More...

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Jun 04, 2011

Charlotte rated it:

http://charlotteswebofbooks.blogspot.com...

Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House is about a young woman who has restlessly moved from rental house to rental house while moving back and forth from California to Lincoln, Nebraska. She finally takes the big plunge in the shark infested waters of Los Angeles real estate. Let me just say that for what Meghan Daum paid for her hovel in LA - would have bought her a mansion in Wyoming. For real. But, having lived in Lincoln, sh More...

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Jun 20, 2010

christa rated it:

In the early 2000s, Meghan Daum did something totally unprecedented. She busted past a bunch of dead male authors with flapper fetishes and Margaret Atwood to land a spot in my Top 5 Favorite Books of All Time list with her collection of contemporary essays: "My Misspent Youth."

It's not a Pulitzer Prize-winning mix; There is a good chance you've never heard of it. But is a real gem, with pieces on the financial woes of residual college tuition and renting in New York City More...

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Aug 15, 2010

Monica rated it:

Not sure how I wound up reading two books about house buying obsession in L.A. this month (this and This is Where We Live by Janelle Brown), since I'm not particularly interested in the topic myself. However, the request function at the library works in mysterious ways, and these both came up one after the other. I picked up Daum's book because I'd enjoyed her earlier series of essays (My Misspent Youth) and wanted to see what happened to her after she left New York. However, I have to say th More...

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Jun 17, 2010

Katie rated it:

Meghan Daum wrote the exact book I wanted/needed to read right now! Though I'm not shopping for real estate, I am about to leave a city (the only city besides Carbondale, Illinois, that in the book she disparages) for another city (my fourth in less than ten adult years, not counting college) for no better reason than that, from a distance, this one 'seems more me' and is allegedly somewhere 'I could see myself staying for a while.' I envision the perfect rental bungalow there, though I don’t kn More...

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May 28, 2010

Becky rated it:

I don't know why - perhaps because I recognize Meghan Daum's name from magazine articles she wrote in the early '90s - I expected this memoir to be more fluff than it is. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the analysis she applies to her upbringing by intellectually striving, but immutably middle-class parents. I won't deny that part of my attraction to at least the early part of the book is because of its similarity to my story - well, my parents' anyway. I find it very interesting to read More...

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Jan 30, 2011

Melody rated it:

I recently read an article that questioned the current trend of everyone penning a memoir. This book, to me, exemplified said trend. A memoir about real estate? I picked it up for the clever title, which now strikes me as the best thing about the book. It would have made a delightful magazine article. There were amusing passages, to be sure, and Daum is a competent writer but there's not enough here, or too much.

The author's endless fascination with her own reactions to parquet and he More...

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Oct 04, 2011

Liralen rated it:

I saw this at the bookstore and was sure it would be my kind of book -- although I don't quite share the author's wanderlust (for lack of a better term), I'm definitely familiar with the thought (delusion) that, if I lived in that house over there (or that one there, or that apartment, or in that city), life would be perfect. It's not so much about the house itself -- it's about the life that the house implies.

But Daum doesn't really go into the meaning behind this need for the 'perf More...

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Feb 27, 2011

JoAnn/QuAppelle rated it:

I can't believe I finished this self-indulgent book. I guess I kept waiting for it to live up to its press and get better. Finally, about halfway through, I started skimming. In my opinion, it was much ado about nothing. Daum seems to have had an idea for a magazine article and somehow boringly expanded it into a book.

There was too much "inner thinking" and stream-of-consciousness writing ---- and so much of it was repetitive. I just did not care about her house yearnings an More...

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Jun 29, 2010

Laurel-Rain rated it:

Meghan Daum’s memoir "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House" leads the reader on a journey toward finding the perfect dwelling. From apartments in NY brownstones to farmhouses in Nebraska, and westward to cottages in LA, the author describes her obsessive quest for the house that’s just out of reach.

Some people have hobbies like collecting, but Ms. Daum admits that searching for just the right neighborhood, redecorating each home so that she is finally authentical More...

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Jun 05, 2010

Lauren rated it:

"When I think back on the places I've lived, I now wonder this: I wonder if the real measure of 'home' is the degree to which you can leave it alone. Maybe appreciating a house means knowing when to stop decorating. Maybe you've never really lived there until you've thrown its broken pieces in the garbage. Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is what's right in front of you. The hard pa More...

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Oct 29, 2010

Liza rated it:

My friend Ralph recommended this book to me, mainly because the author is a Vassarite, but probably also because he knows about my proclivity for moving. Maybe he doesn't realize that I'm slightly panicked that I've become settled in New York and daydream about moving (Southwestern England? Berlin? Perhaps New Mexico would be interesting?) constantly.

I love this author in that she's very self-aware about her real estate neuroses without having that whole annoyingly ironic self-aware More...

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Jun 17, 2010

Jane rated it:

In 1999 Meghan Daum wrote an article for the New Yorker in which she was positively rhapsodic about her move from New York City to Lincoln, Nebraska. But she didn't stay long. So I was anxious to see how Nebraska fared in this book about first her family's and then her own quest for the perfect home. She's still very positive about her time in Nebraska and harkened back to it often. But as she said she couldn't be "both Dorothy Parker and Willa Cather" so after three years she deci More...

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May 21, 2010

Hol added it

I saw the author read from this, which helped me enjoy it more than I would have otherwise; in person, she was very thoughtful and engaging, but most of the book felt like it was written too close to the events it describes. Insufficient introspection. Oddly enough, I was very amused by her endless name-dropping re: furniture, clothing, etc., and for some reason I assumed that she was making up these ridiculous-sounding shops and catalogs that she worshiped--she does play with facts here and the More...

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Jun 15, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

Instead of telling you why you should read this book, I'm going to tell you why I enjoyed it. Usually they're the same reasons, but in this case I can't guarantee that. This book has been on my "to read" list for over a year since I'd seen its review on NPR. With my own obsession with real estate and a penchant for creating extremely detailed fantasies, I knew that I would identify with this book. When I finally got around to reading it I was not disappointed. I felt myself nodding alo More...

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Aug 23, 2010

Junita rated it:

Why oh why did I love this book so much? Was it the subject matter? What it means to inhabit a space; what makes a house a home; how the itinerant moving that so often comes with young adulthood can leave you feeling driftless and a little sad; but how exciting the hunt for real estate can be (both houses and apartments). Yes. This was part of it. But it was Meghan Daum's completely honest, hilarious, whip smart way of articulating all of these emotions that had me so charmed. I don't often pond More...

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Oct 09, 2011

Debra rated it:

There was something about this book that really resonated with me. The notion that where you live can change or fix something in your life that you aren't happy about, or that will define you in a more accurate way...Daum may have had some sort of mental illness when it came to her inability to stay put anyplace for long, but there was something that spoke to me. Perhaps I'm as wiggy as she was, the only difference being that I've NEVER bought a house (could never afford one) nor do I move with More...

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Apr 17, 2011

Lea rated it:

Wow. I definitely missed something here that a lot of people apparently saw. I did NOT think this book was funny. At all. I was expecting it to be a light read, but instead found it to be overwrought and angst filled. There is almost no aspect of life that the author can't find a bit of disappointment or sorrow in, although -- to be fair -- she does seem to be a very caring and devoted dog owner. Perhaps the fault lies more with me than with the author -- as a fellow house-obsessed woman, maybe More...

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