Bonus: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Little, Brown and Company

Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris
2000

The Summary
In Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris recounts his childhood in North Carolina and his eventual migration to Paris via New York.  Full of funny and hilarious essays, Sedaris' book encompasses his entire life experience as a gay man in a rather dysfunctional family.

The Good
Me Talk Pretty One Day is very funny.  Sedaris has a sharp tongue and a scathing wit that makes his essays - or, more accurately, his stories about adolescence in the South and his adulthood in Paris - incredibly enjoyable.  Sedaris is not above poking fun at himself or others; he weaves his life experiences and opinions together, fashioning funny and (sometimes) absurd stories that are sure to make you laugh.

Truthfully, I think his stories about his father, Lou, are perhaps some of his best.  One of my favorites was "I'll Eat What He's Wearing," which was Sedaris's last essay.  It chronicles his dad's bad habit of keeping food long past any reasonable expiration date, including a particularly startling mishap with a hat.

The Bad
While I did enjoy  Me Talk Pretty One Day, I wasn't enthralled.  Sedaris is very humorous and his stories are pretty funny, but I just couldn't seem to stay involved in the book.  I would read a story here or there, but it took me weeks to finish the entire book.

Perhaps, that's the way it's meant to be read, taking one story at a time; however, I couldn't help feeling like I was just not enjoying it as much by reading it piecemeal.  It felt like I was forgetting bits of it as I only picked it up sporadically.  It was put on the back burner a lot more than I'd like to admit.

So, overall, Me Talk Pretty One Day is a decent book.  Not great, but not bad either.

The Ugly
Although Sedaris tells his story with a fair amount of humor, his stories about his drug addiction are rather brutal.  He's honest with himself about his addictions, plus he's honest with his audience, which means he's probably going to tell you everything in explicit detail.