City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

The best of me, David Sedaris

eng

no index present

non fiction

The best of me

David Sedaris

For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say "give it to me" in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird. But if all you expect to find in Sedaris's work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms at long last with the other. Taken together, the stories in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected, it's often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful

Introduction -- Glen's homophobia newsletter vol. 3, no. 2 -- Front row center with Thaddeus Bristol -- Christmas means giving -- The incomplete quad -- Girl crazy -- Card wired -- How to spend the budget surplus -- You can't kill the rooster -- Me talk pretty one day -- Jesus shaves -- Dog days -- Us and them -- Let it snow -- The ship shape -- The girl next door -- Repeat after me -- Six to eight black men -- Possession -- Nuit of the living dead -- Solution to Saturday's puzzle -- The understudy -- Town and country -- In the waiting room -- Undecided -- The cat and the baboon -- The motherless bear -- The faithful setter -- Dentists without borders -- Memory laps -- Think differenter -- Loggerheads -- If I ruled the world -- Easy, Tiger -- Laugh, Kookaburra -- Just a quick e-mail -- A guy walks into a bar car -- Standing by -- Understanding understanding owls -- Now we are five -- A house divided -- The perfect fit -- Leviathan -- A modest proposal -- Why aren't you laughing? -- The spirit world -- Unbuttoned