Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
by Authors:
David Sedaris
Hardcover
This is David Sedaris's sixth collection of short essays and it marks a slight shift of emphasis from the hilarious to the poignant. His subject is mostly himself and his extended circle of family and friends in North Carolina, but he also includes pieces about arguing with his boyfriend, Hugh, and living in France.
One of the shortest but most resonant is the extraordinary story of his father asking him to leave home. "We both know why I'm doing this," his father says. Sedaris assumes it is because he is a failure, a drug addict and a sponge. He would not know until months later that his father had kicked him out because he was gay. They seem to get on all right afterwards, though.
"The Girl Next Door", about his friendship with an insanely evil devil child, chills the blood, but Sedaris remains cheerfully upbeat about almost everything throughout these stories, narrating with a warm, witty voice that reminds one of Garrison Keillor.
Average Customer Rating:
Not Like Any Other Ordinary Book
This is a fantastic book and enjoyable to read. The author does not eliminate nor deny any childhood embarrassing moments, such as playing strip poker. He first refuses to play strip poker knowing he'll be stripped butt naked. He settles in and turns the table and tricks the other boys pretending he knows how to play poker. The stories are so hilarious that you will definitely be amused. There's a chapter called, Auntie Monie who would come to visit a few times in a year. His mother tries to become more comfortable with Auntie Monie foreseeing some inheritance. Then his mother would kick the children outside one winter day locking them out. He's a brilliant comedian and shows it in this book. By the end of the chapter, there will be that one thought that will stick in your mind and make you giggle. Sedaris is a really good story teller and can draw you into his books like never before. The stories are non-stop; you won't be able to put your book down.
what a wonderful dysfunctional world!
What Sedaris does so well is to show his audience pictures. He doesn't just tell you about his family and the way he views them, he describes them so well that I found myself added to the story. I'm not actually in the book, but I felt ghostly close to the events that took place. I watched from the basement as he tells the other boys "It's against my religion to play poker." I find myself in the backseat of the car as his mother asked "Do you want me to give you a ride back to your little shantytown?" Sedaris's humor is dry and sarcastic. He preys on the ignorance of others and himself, finding no person to sacred that they avoid his story pictures.
The book is separated into 22 different short stories, ranging from his childhood to his midlife. The stories have no particular unifying theme, just glimpses into the David Sedaris experience, many which include his family. Most of the book's situations are treated light heartedly, with a dysfunctional undertone. What Sedaris does so well is to keep the reader interested. I wanted to find out why the man in "Blood Work" feels the need to masturbate on the couch while Sedaris vacuums the man's living room. Who wouldn't want to keep reading when a story starts of with "I was on the front porch, drowning a mouse in a bucket when this van pulled up, which was strange." Sedaris's writing style is one where he passes off abnormal situations as typical and changes ordinary ones to insane.
The downside to his writing is that sometimes he is too hard on himself and the reader gets the feeling that he just may not like himself very much. If only Sedaris could see himself as I do, a true artist, who paints pictures in the minds of the readers that will last a lifetime.
I wish I could make my own neuroses this entertaining
You wonder what David Sedaris will do for material once he's finished excavating his own biography. But he's so merciless in his self-deprecating navel-gazing that he can probably always wring something out of whatever happens to him tomorrow. The anecdote about the mouse, which I first heard on the radio, alone qualifies this book as a memorably discomforting read.
Can't find what you're looking for? Then try Google.
DVD's
