OK, I must admit that it took me a while to get into this book. I thought of returning it many times to the library but just never did mainly because I just didn't have any errands to do near the library.

As the title suggests, it's a book about being stuck. The authors pulls stories from all over the place and I think it became mostly a personal narrative. I would read one story and think this book was trivial. Inane. Silly. However, the next story would make me pause and make me excited (or sickened) to be a human.

It's a soft kind of book. It doesn't really have a main purpose or big climax. It meanders this way and that. It started as a lump of clay ready to be molded into something wonderful and beautiful. In the end, it's still a lump of clay. Wonderful and beautiful.

This book isn't for everyone. If you're looking for a roller coaster, look elsewhere. This is more just like a pleasant walk on the same road that you walk every day with a good friend - and subtly seeing everything just a little different. ( )

I wanted to like this book way more than I did. I had no problem with her writing or her adding people's individual stories in between. I had a problem with how she thinks, also a big problem I had when I read her book on saints. She can come across as very snarky, self-righteous and rude.

As a person with a 34 year relentless eating disorder, I will NOT allow her to label me as someone with 'bad habits '. I have had and continue to have a team of mental health workers who have not made any progress with it, and I graduated from a 5 month eating disorder program here in NY only to leave heavier than when I entered. I also have OCD and chronic insomnia. These are illnesses/disorders/afflictions and not bad habits. So if that is her stance, we have to part ways.

Also she is a self acknowledged cheapskate, something I am not and abhor. I gravitate generosity.

She is against living with your parents beyond the age of 20 or so, yet, how many college graduates out there find the only job waiting for them is pushing a broom ?? I have a Master's degree and it never mattered on bit. I am on SS disability now, but on my last job for the gov't in 2007 I only made $ 44,000. NY rents start at about $ 1,500 a month, then with the light bill, gas bill, phone bill, laundry, food and carfare, how can you manage ??? So she blames young people for wasting money, but if you make $ 35,000 on your first job out of school, the only place you can live for that kind of money is someone's closet for $ 100 a week.

I no longer like this author - I have read 3 of her books, I think I will toss ' Party of One ', I don't think I can deal with her anymore. ( )

What a weird book. Well, the first 100 pages anyway, that’s where I stopped.

Basically it’s the comments section of any internet website. Ranting nearly incomprehensibly about everything under the sun, she states near the beginning that she’s really immature and feels like she never moved past 12 years old, and is very fearful. That pretty much sets the tone of the book.

Not what I was expecting, or wanted. ( )

I picked this book up while perusing the "last chance" section at Barnes and Noble. It is not a self-help book, it's a treatise on how and why we're stuck in various arenas of our lives- job, relationships, bad habits, etc. Well-researched and easy to read, a lot of what Rufus has to say makes sense. One of the sections I found very interesting was about the impact capitalism (and it's opposites) have had on monogamy. As the author says, "Companies with goods and services to sell hate happy couples." If we are happy and feeling content with our lives, we don't need anything else to fill the void.

I feel, however, she oversimplified a few things and her bias shows. The chapter on trauma, and how our current society has made superstars of victims, feels a little whiney. And she acknowledges her own issues, which sheds light on why it felt that way. She also disparages therapy a bit, which I might take personally ;)

It's a lot of good food for thought. I guess I wish the book offered some hope for getting unstuck, which was hinted at in the introduction, but didn't surface anywhere else. ( )

I had to force myself to finish this one. The premise is ok. It is kind of like a journal/blog in which the author starts out with examination of her own obsessions, and then enlarges the discussion to include society. The writing style bothered me. Too much reliance on the technique of using single lines, or words as counterpoints. Overused. Irritating. ( )