Frequency North Reading: Meghan Daum's obsession with finding the perfect home

Prior to the reading, I searched Amazon.com for Daum's memoir Life Would be Perfect If I Lived In That House. It seemed that the customers who did not love HGTV disliked the memoir. Going to the reading, I wanted to form my own opinion. I wanted the Amazon reviewers to be wrong.

Meghan Daum in the flesh...

She's a woman who can't seem to stay in one place for too long when it comes to houses. She describes the book as an attempt to "discover the relationship between self and place" and having much less to do with a how-to of real estate stats and mortgages.

During the reading I laughed a little during certain sections but I was not sold on her memoir. A lot of it probably has to do with her delivery and not her writing. I know this to be true, having read potions of her short story collection My Misspent Youth. She is witty and funny, sucking you into the story. However at the reading I thought to myself, "is this the same Meghan Daum that had an e-mail romance, explored the evolution of air travel, and the subculture of polyamory?"

I think my issue is that the writer's persona did not seem to match the person. Not that this is anything to fault her with. The persona of the writer should be different from the human being, it's how we protect ourselves. I guess I was surprised by the gap.

The topic of the reading reminded me of our own Megan Fulwiler's essay, A Home of One's Own. In this essay, she explores the adventure that is buying a home as a single woman and learning to become a Ms. fix it. Her writing about this life transition traverses the same topic within a tighter space. This time, I believe the old adage is true, less is more!