Charming little slice of life observations. ( )

Another memoir by Sedaris, who this time is simply pulling some nuggets out of his diaries from decades ago. Honestly, I’m not sure if he is stretching a yarn with some of these stories, or if he’s more observant than I am, or if he just has led the sort of life that puts him in the path of some of these crazy characters. Maybe it’s a little of all the above. In any case, it had me laughing at a time when I needed lifting out of my stressful everyday life, and I appreciated it.

Audiobook, borrowed from my public library via Overdrive, with an excellent narration by the author.
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The little tidbits day by day of David's musings. You see his writing and humor develop over the years. He discusses his mother's death, his typical republican, alcoholic father and bits about his siblings. They way he looks at some things is hilarious! A great read, especially if you love David Sederis! ( )

I hardly laughed and quite honestly, I get the impression that David Sedaris is a total jerk. I couldn’t wait to finish this. Now I know to never read something by him ever again. ( )

An edited but extensive collection of 25 years of David Sedaris' diary entries. This is only sort of incidentally a chronicle of his life. Some major life events get skimmed over or vaguely alluded to. Various people and places show up with no introduction whatsoever (although some of them, at least, will be familiar if you've read Sedaris's essay collections). Sometimes an entry is about what he did that day, featuring lots of painting work and drug-taking in the earlier years, more plane flights and dinner parties in the later ones. More often it's just some description of something he thought about or saw that day. And the things that capture his attention enough to remark on them are... interesting. Interesting, and disturbing. He catalogs acts of violence, of harassment, misogyny, and bigotry. Lots of them. Possibly as his way of trying to process it all, who knows? He also has a weird obsession with noting every time he sees a person with physical or mental disabilities and what they were doing, and while it's never in a way that feels mean-spirited or mocking, it is a little uncomfortable. Like, dude, these are just people living their lives, can we stare a little less, please? Yeesh. Then again, he does seem to enjoy staring at strangers in general.

Anyway. You'd think, with all that, that it would be an unpleasant read, and that at over 500 pages, when it wasn't unpleasant it would just be tedious. But there is, apparently, something I find compelling about getting these little, mostly unfiltered, glimpses into someone's life and mind, and it did keep me turning pages more quickly than I would have expected. ( )