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I'd Rather Not

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I'd Rather Not

By: Robert Skinner
Narrated by: Robert Skinner
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About this listen

From one of Australia's most wryly funny writers comes an original and utterly hilarious memoir of reaching for the stars while lying in a ditch.

Quiet Quitting. The Great Resignation.

Sometimes a literary sensibility catches the spirit of the times. In I'd Rather Not, Robert Skinner has it all covered. This wonderful audiobook of adventures (and misadventures) in the art of living is wryly subversive and constantly hilarious. It is about work, escape and that something more we all need.

'I was sleeping in what might reasonably be described as a ditch, though I tried not tothink of it in those terms for morale reasons ...'

Robert Skinner arrives in the city, searching for a richer life. Things begin badly and then, surprisingly, get slightly worse. Pretty soon he's sleeping rough and trying to run a literary magazine out of a dog park. His quest for meaning keeps being thwarted, by gainful employment, beagles, house parties, ill-advised love affairs, camel trips and bureaucratic entanglements.

I'd Rather Not is a deeply funny book of light and shade, triumph and misadventure, where the wisdom is hard-won and promptly forgotten. Yet even when his ventures fail, Robert Skinner succeeds, always, in delighting listeners.

For fans of Sloane C rosley, Andrew Sean Greer, Nathan Fielder and David Sedaris.

©2023 Robert Skinner (P)2023 Penguin Audio Funny Inspiring Witty Comedy
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Clever use of vocab. Story was engaging and relatable. I liked the tales of lockdown the most.

Good short listen for a rainy arvo

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It's as though one has stumbled into happy hour at a local pub, and a young whipper snapper has managed to convince the old fellas he's got a good yarn of his own!

I will definitely look out for future books!

My only gripe is the use of the Americanism."gotten" but I suppose you have lived in Melbourne too long, and their trash talk has rubbed off on you! I suppose you pronounce it "elbum" now also...

Keep up the good work

A future classic Australian yarn

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Maybe I'm too old, or have the wrong uni degree, but "I'd Rather Not" was neither interesting nor funny to me. The book was autobiographical, but the stories felt completely disjointed and even worse, boring. He writes about his ordinary life, revels in his failures and then it just...ends. I'm told that it's supposed to be funny, but I certainly wasn't laughing. It felt like the kind of humor where "you had to be there" to understand it. Or maybe, like the morbid humour you see among medical students, you need to be a 20-something arts major to truely appreciate the jokes.

The one shining positive of this book was that it was short. Thank goodness.

Appropriately Named

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Dreadful book, nonsensical content. it's like an inner city, unemployed, over opinionated wankers confession of achieving bugger all in life. I wouldn't have finished it if it weren't our book club's monthly title.

incoherent ramblings of a dead beat art student

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