Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

I was so excited when the library finally got me this book! I had waited many months for my name to show up as #1 on the waiting list, and even longer for the person who had checked it out before me to return it. Once past the initial euphoria of finally holding the book in my hands, I discovered that like other books that David Sedaris has written, this one is filled with amusing episodes from Sedaris' life, some of which are found in his other collections. That was a bit of a letdown. Fortunately for me as a reader, this collection contains one of my favorite vignettes, "Big Boy", which takes me back to an episode during my own childhood when my cousin Pam and I were trapped in a bathroom at a relatives home. Sedaris' account is side-splittingly funny. So was the event we lived through. It's great when a book can make you laugh out loud. This book makes you run to friends and family and force them to read the passages that have made you weep with laughter. Not every book that claims to be funny makes you laugh... this one does.

In the first half of the book, Sedaris draws hysterical portraits of other family members, most especially his sister Lisa (who will say anything) and his father (who is a food hoarder). The second half of the book involves Sedaris' attempts to learn or perhaps avoid learning French. He talks about his teachers, his fellow language students, and the peculiar words and phrases he does learn ("bottleneck", "witch doctor") in lieu of those phrases that would be more helpful in conversation with the people in Paris. As always, Sedaris is both touching and amusing, and his writing style and gift for description are nothing short of brilliant. It's always a pleasure to pick up one of his books, even if, as in this case, I've read some of the stories before. Like visiting with old friends from high school, however, you leave remembers why you wanted to get together in the first place. Sedaris is a comic writer of the first order, and I will continue to read through all the titles he has published.

Submitted by Gerti