Rating:  Summary: Sharp-witted, laugh-out-loud funny stuff. Review: David Sedaris has several things going for him. For starters, his life has been filled with unique adventures that make great launching pads for his essays on the American experience. He also brings a -- oh, forget it. It's very, very, very, funny stuff, and he can turn a phrase like nobody's business. Buy it. If you have a sense of humor, you'll eat it up.
Rating:  Summary: Bitingly funny Review: Wildly amusing, sarcastic to a fault, Sedaris allows us to wander around inside the head of the oddest one the bunch. Not for the faint of heart or the less than cynical.
Rating:  Summary: David Sedaris makes reading fun again Review: Each little story is another slice of a life in a ugly, bitter, funny cynical world. They are seperate stories about the same guy, addressed to the reader as if you were inside his quirky little head. He only occasionaly falls into cliche. The narratives are short enough to keep one moving swiftly, eager for another taste of Sedaris's screwy mouthfuls of monologue.
Rating:  Summary: About $9,000. Review: Be warned: read this book and you will get laugh-lines. Deep, permanent laugh lines.The L.A. plastic surgeons generally have lower prices for a face lift than the N.Y doctors. But you really need to explore, because cosmetic surgery in L.A. is like sushi; it's everywhere. So it might be worth the cash to go to a N.Y doctor. Although, I understand that there are some great doctors in Atlanta. My point is: research your physician before undergoing surgery. Basically, expect to pay around nine grand. But again, this depends on what you have done and where. If you really don't like the idea of going under the knife, simply don't buy any book from Sedaris.
Rating:  Summary: Twisted Fun Review: When I read a book like this one, I often wonder if anyone could write such a book, simply by accounting the oddest moments of their life, and adding a bit of exaggeration and humor. But Sedaris does more than that, he strips himself and the characters naked, showing the very best and worst in them. Autobiographical material is at its best when the author reveals his flaws and quirks, and Sedaris doesn't disappoint, branding himself a coward, hipocrite, thief, and ultimately human. More than anything, he delights in showing us the oddities that exist behind the common American facade. He has a special genius for taking events that must have been very sad and embarrassing at the time, and, by laughing at them himself, allowing us to laugh along. Not everyone is going to like every essay, and one of them fell flat for me, but I found it overall to be wonderfully twisted fun.
Rating:  Summary: This really gets to you. Review: Sedaris' style is somewhat self-loathing, hilariously irreverent and dry, and often a tad dark. I had gobbled up his previous collection of stories, "Barrel Fever," and particularly enjoyed his section of essays attached, so when "Naked" appeared to offer more of the same: I was damn excited. And for good reason: this is a fantastic book. Truthfully, it struck me as very sad, though. Sedaris' autobiographical account of his obsessive-compulsive disorder is almost more upsetting than it is funny...but only almost. Each account is bouyed by Sedaris' irrepressible ability to chuckle in the face of hardship (whether it be lack of identity, psychological disorders, seriously frightening people, and bare-boned grief). I really like this man, and I really like that he shared this with us.
Rating:  Summary: Worst Book of Decade Review: I don't know how this book made it to the NY Times Bestseller. It was the worst piece of writing I have ever read. Even twenty year olds in my previous fiction workshops could write a more substantial, insightful story than Sedaris. It's pathetic that all it takes to sell thousands of copies of a novel is a person inventing the most outrageous stories about his 'supposed' real life. This should have been classified under fiction, since there is hardly a shred of truth to these short memoir essays. My advice : don't waste your money & time for this garbage; it comes a dime a dozen.
Rating:  Summary: Hysterical. Can't stop laughing, hubby thinks I'm nuts. Review: I was not sure if this was actually autobiographical. How could anyone's life be so macabre -- unusual -- simply difficult to believe. The author with his talent for describing his family, makes mine sound boring. My daughter heard Sedaris on NPR and had to pull her car over to get off of the road because she was laughing so much. That's when she decided to purchase Mom (Me!) a copy of the book for Xmas. I, in turn, shall send it on to my twin, a NYC dweller, who I am sure will find the book as captivating as I did. I would like to meet Sedaris.
Rating:  Summary: Funny, funny, funny Review: The best use of sarcasm and humor to highlight the pains of life, and especially of growing up, that I've ever seen. I never thought I'd write a review but this book put me over the edge. You're missing a lot if you don't read it.
Rating:  Summary: Naked was a great read, funny and accessible. Review: I read Barrel Fever four years ago and that was one of the few books that kept me laughing out loud. Therefore my expectations of Naked were very high. In his shorter stories, especially "Plague of Ticks","Cyclops" and "The Drama Bug", Sedaris' hilarious voice and knack for extending a joke past its initial impact through to an inevitably outrageous conclusion very much keeps to the style successfully employed in Barrel Fever. What surprised and delighted me about Naked were Sedaris' more serious and honestly introspective stories, such as "I Like Guys," "Planet of the Apes" and "C.O.G." There is no denying that Sedaris' humourous, barb-tinged writing is more airtight and solid than his serious stuff, but each of these stories proved in some way that he has something to say even when restrained and overtly searching for meaning. Particularly evocative was the penultimate story "Ashes," the last sentence of which expressed as much sublime tragedy as a million mock-psychology paperbacks could ever hope to communicate. Ironically, the title story, "Naked," was by far the weakest, and I believe that it is because the story is too clearly an autobiographical sketch, and thus the details and experiences are too believable to be interesting. Sedaris is undoubtedly trying to show us how grotesque a snapshot of life can be without a satirical retouching, but the reason we read great humourists and absurdists is precisely for the retouching: life's grotesqueness has become too commonplace. We need writers like Sedaris to remind us of the implications.
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