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.

I was sleeping in what might reasonably be described as a ditch, though I tried not to think 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 endless jobs, beagles, house parties, ill-advised love affairs, camel trips and bureaucratic entanglements.

Sometimes a book catches the spirit of the times. I'd Rather Not is about work, escape and that something more we all need.

'This book is like a big, properly made gin and tonic drunk outside in a garden on a perfect Saturday afternoon.' -Cate Kennedy, author of The World Beneath and Like a House on Fire

'No one writes better when the stakes are lower.' -Sam Vincent, author of My Father and Other Animals

'My heart leaps whenever I see Robert Skinner's by-line; I know I am in for a hilarious literary treat complete with wry pearlers, gallows truths and wicked timing. People will say he is Australia's Sedaris, but he's not. He's Robert Skinner and he's a bloody marvel.' -Anna Krien, author of Night Games and Act of Grace

'A funny and affecting celebration of the glorious choices we so often have about where to go and how to get there.' -Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron and Phase Six