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Average customer rating:

Too much sex, not enough science fiction
Choose any other Hamilton title
Missed opportunity but entertaining nonetheless
Ok, but not what I've come to expect from Hamilton
How favorite authors can fail...

Misspent Youth
Peter F. Hamilton
Manufacturer: Tor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0330480227

Customer Reviews:

Too much sex, not enough science fiction.......2006-05-27

Luckily I read Pandora's star and Judas unchained before I read this, apparently the first book in the series, or I would have given up and missed the whole series, and the others are really great.
What a load of rubbish this book is. You keep hoping for something science-fiction like to happen, but it never does. They just keep having (explicit, R18) sex.
I like Peter F hamilton's other two books, but sorry, this oen is a dud!

Choose any other Hamilton title.......2005-10-06

What utter crap.

After reading the Night's Dawn trilogy and Fallen Dragon, I eagerly snatched and bought this one. While the concept of rejuvenation hasn't been explored fully, and the way in which Hamilton deals with EU politics of the future is entertaining enough, the novel's degeneration into bad character development and description, lousy ending and all-too-predictable scenes made me wonder if it was the same author.

All in all, one star for the steamy scenes - just because you don't get much of those in mature SF - and one star for the well-developed world - because after all my ranting, it is still a good setting. But the book as a complete work is bad. Very bad.

Missed opportunity but entertaining nonetheless.......2005-09-05

Being a fan of Peter F. Hamilton I would have bought this book blind, but the theme of rejuvenation and its implications for morality caught my interest as well. However, I'm sorry to say this book does not live up to the high standard I've come to expect from Hamilton. Perhaps Hamilton elected to write a novel that can finally be produced as a single movie?

In Misspent Youth, one man is given the opportunity to undergo an experimental rejuvenation treatment, with the tab picked up by the EU. Jeff Baker is chosen because of his enormous contribution to innovation by inventing the memory chrystals that are essential to the successor of the Internet. His elderly mind is given the body of his former twentyfive-ish self, with the understanding that he will apply his considerable intellectual powers to helping figure out a room temperature superconductor.

It all sounds pretty scifi so far, but in reality the book is a family drama more than anything else. What's an old man in a young body to do? Party, Drinks and Nookie of course! Preferably with his son's friends. However, the way that Baker strays seems, well, a bit mundane. The real questions, like how to determine the age of someone rejuvenated (by memories or by appearance) are only touched upon, but not fleshed out.

The story quickly degenerates into a tale of love, lust and jealousy, with Jeff and his son Tim as the main antagonists. Of course by the end of the book everything is neatly wrapped up but it takes a lot of increasingly unrealistic sex scenes to get there.

That said, I did have a very good time reading the book. Hamilton has a knack for portraying girls and women we would all like to fall in love with (or be like). As a holiday novel, this should easily get you through a long tedious flight or a few days at the beach. Bring sunscreen!

Ok, but not what I've come to expect from Hamilton.......2004-09-27

Peter Hamilton is probably my favorite author for his Night's Dawn Trilogy, Fallen Dragon, and the recent Pandora's Star, so I had high hopes for this book as well. While this book isn't bad, it just doesn't live up to the standard set in Hamilton's other books.

First of all, this book is much more driven by the characters than the story or the setting, which is somewhat different than the other books I mentioned where Hamilton does a great job of creating a complicated believable setting for the stories to take place. This story is set much closer to the present, so he does not have as much leeway to mold the setting which is what he really seems to excel at. Despite this, however, I really thought that it would be interesting to see one of the technologies Hamilton uses so well to shape his stories in its infant stages instead of when it is already perfected and widespread. And that part of the story was pretty good. But the characters, while likeable and interesting, just weren't all that believable, which is more important in this story as it is driven mainly by the characters.

The first part of the story is spent painting Jeff as one kind of person, then throughout the story we see that he isn't that at all, but is something much different than we have been led to believe, and that also is pretty well done. The problem comes in towards the end of the story when we're again led to believe that he is the kind of person that we started with, despite the bulk of the story which assures us that he isn't. It just isn't very well done.

If you're a fan of Hamilton, this is probably worth reading, but just don't expect the same quality, or the same epic feel of some of his other work.

How favorite authors can fail..........2004-01-06

Peter Hamilton has been one of my favorite authors, but this book is, I am sorry to say, an absolute waste of time.
Written around unrealistic teenagers sexual dreams (willing girls, very potent man) and ending like the author didn't knew how to end it. The theme of rejuvenation and the effects on personal life unsatisfactorily worked out.
The only good thing is that, like all his books, it is an easy read, because he absolutely knows how to write.
Please, mr. Hamilton, go back to space opera and hard SF.

Average customer rating:

Tortured Pleasure
Excellent writing
The Truth will set you free
oh stinky
My relationship with Meghan

My Misspent Youth: Essays
Meghan Daum
Manufacturer: Grove Press, Open City Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1890447269

Book Description

Meghan Daum is one of the most celebrated nonfiction writers of her generation, widely recognized for the fresh, provocative approach with which she unearths hidden fault lines in the American landscape. From her well-remembered New Yorker essays about the financial demands of big-city ambition and the ethereal, strangely old-fashioned allure of cyber relationships to her dazzlingly hilarious riff in Harper's about musical passions that give way to middle-brow paraphernalia, Daum delves into the center of things while closely examining the detritus that spills out along the way. She speaks to questions at the root of the contemporary experience, from the search for authenticity and interpersonal connection in a society defined by consumerism and media; to the disenchantment of working in a "glamour profession"; to the catastrophic effects of living among New York City's terminal hipsters. With precision and well-balanced irony, Daum implicates herself as readily as she does the targets that fascinate and horrify her. In a review of The KGB Bar Reader, in which Daphne Merkin singled out Daum's essay about the inability to mourn a friend's death, Merkin wrote: "It's brutally quick, the way this happens, this falling in love with a writer's style. Daum's story hooked me by the second line. Hmm, I thought, this is a writer worth suspending my routines for."

Customer Reviews:

Tortured Pleasure.......2006-11-01

Having purchased this book based upon an Amazon rec, I spent the first chapter cursing Meghan Daum and Jeff Bezos. It was EXCRUTIATINGLY true of everything I know about young adult life in New York City, and I hated having it served up to me in such precise, laboriously correct fashion. However, I persisted, and was ultimately rewarded by much of what I read...finally succumbing altogether when I reached the "Music is My Bag" segment; as one bearing the viciously peculiar scars of an adolescent oboe experience, I laughed OUT LOUD during a morning rush-hour train ride, and forgave everything remotely unsatisfying that had come before. Anyone who has ever had the burden of Eccentricity as Excellence imposed by a parent, for whatever reason, will both cringe and rejoice at this INCREDIBLY detailed accounting of what it costs to be too smart and unique for the flute (or its functional equivalent--name the field). Congratulations, Meghan: You finally put down that heinous 'horn' and its attendant reed making, as did I, and never looked back. I fantasize that someday I'll have the privilege of recounting "The Horror of Interlochen (Michigan) All-State Orchestra 1979" to you over coffee...I thank you for giving voice to every over-achiever who's ever questioned the mission we were unwittingly assigned, and found the courage to defy the twin tyrannies of conformity AND its evil twin, The Subculture of Bagdom.

Excellent writing.......2003-10-23

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.

The Truth will set you free.......2003-07-11

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. I too suffered at the hands of a New York City and almost went bankrupt trying to self-actualize on my creative ambitions. The big break never happened, something that never factored into the game plan. New York City, that place drives me nuts!

I just can't help but talk about my plight because what Meghan perfectly verbalized in MY MISSPENT YOUTH captures my New York experience and my twenties in ways I could never articulate. And at the root of her essays Meghan subtly answers the meaning of life. For real! That is, the meaning of life for those who failed.

oh stinky.......2002-09-17

Don't waste your time with this dreck. go get Dan Zevin's "The Day I Turned Uncool: Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-up."

My relationship with Meghan.......2002-07-19

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. It is the sort of love that doesn't leave you because it cannot ultimately be satisfying, but rather the kind of compromised love one would possess after the slow realization that the person one is planning marriage with is simply a little too much this or not quite enough that. I don't find Meghan arrogant or annoying, and I understand her repugnance for carpeting. I may not agree with all of her social and material preferences but I endlessly admire the conviction of her idiosyncratic nature. Meghan, if you're reading this: please do write again.

The Next Better Place: Memories of My Misspent Youth

Average customer rating:

Long Day's Outrageous Journey
Coming of age story of the highest order
brilliant wanderings

The Next Better Place: Memories of My Misspent Youth
Michael C. Keith
Manufacturer: Algonquin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1565124367

Book Description

In 1959, at the age of eleven, Michael Keith ditched his relatively stable life with his mother and sisters in Albany, New York, and surreptitiously set off hitchhiking out West with his estranged, alcoholic dad. His memoir, told without sentimentality in the funny, world-wise voice of the young boy he once was, describes the bizarre characters they encounter in the rundown rooming houses and homeless missions of Pittsburgh and Ft. Worth, where they hole up as Michael's father works odd jobs to make enough money for them to move on; in the carnivals of the Midwest and the casinos of Las Vegas, where Michael dreams of Hollywood stardom; and in every two-bit town along the way, where they attend AA meetings just for a cup of coffee and a decent doughnut.

The Next Better Place explores the fine line between wanderlust and compulsion, between running away and arriving, and will resonate for anyone who has enjoyed the work of Tobias Wolff, Jack Kerouac, and William Kennedy.

Customer Reviews:

Long Day's Outrageous Journey.......2005-07-25

What a rip roaring road trip. More ups and downs than a Six Flags ride and more entertaining. One of the best memoirs in the last few years.

Coming of age story of the highest order.......2004-07-05

The author combines memoir, travelogue and coming of age story forms to take you with him on a sad but incredibly funny journey with his alcoholic, grass-is-always-greener father. The facts are heartbreaking but the boy is gonna make it and you know that as you go with him. If you having any wanderlust you will be looking out the window after reading this book. The writing is first-rate with memorable passages. I read half of the book before leaving the bookstore! It didn't hurt that he starts his journey in Albany, which happens to be my home, getting all the details right as he heads to California. But all the rest is purely universal. A must read.

brilliant wanderings.......2004-06-19

The book reads even better the second time around, and the Afterword addresses some questions I was left with. A real fun romp. It would make a great road flick.

Average customer rating:

Misspent Youth (National Report)

Manufacturer: Audit Commission
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Criminology | Crime & Criminals | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1862400075

Average customer rating:

Evidence of a Misspent Youth
Mark Pickard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000R46V1Q

Product Description

Self-published paperback.

Memories of a misspent youth, 1872-1896,

Average customer rating:

Memories of a misspent youth, 1872-1896,
Grant Richards
Manufacturer: W. Heinemann, ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006D61F4

Average customer rating:

MISSPENT YOUTH
Not Applicable
Manufacturer: The Audit Commission.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000P9IU7G

Average customer rating:

Musings on a Misspent Youth
M.D. John R. Judge
Manufacturer: Buono Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0963805908

Product Description

Trade paperback.

Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth [Digitally remastered from first generation tapes]

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Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth [Digitally remastered from first generation tapes]
Joan Jett and The Blackhearts
Manufacturer: Blackheart Records
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM
ASIN: B000KYRBLC

Average customer rating:

Misspent Youth '99 Wales

Manufacturer: The Audit Commission
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1862401667

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