I thought I’d be a bigger David Sedaris fan.
After all, his reputation precedes him- he is known for his sarcasm, his self-deprecation and his wry humor. Felt like a perfect match, no?
I read Me Talk Pretty One Day a while back and am pretty sure I liked it, but this was in my pre-carlyreads days so I don’t have a really good way of knowing offhand. Based on some things I highlighted, I connected to it on a few levels tied to the idea that I also once had to adjust to a totally different life and culture with an inability to successfully communicate with people around me. Good enough for me, though it seems that was probably a small part of a long book.
This time around, I just didn’t really connect. It’s not that he’s missing the above characteristics, or that his writing is of poor quality- I just couldn’t get really into it. I didn’t highlight anything, I didn’t find anything really exciting about it and even though it’s short stories/essays, I couldn’t really get into it.
It’s possible too that this was just poor timing- I decided on a book of essays because it would be easier to pick it up and put it down, as it was a crazy week of traveling back from a weekend away, spending less than 24 hours in New York mid-week and preparing to leave for a week in Israel while reading it. Perhaps I would have fared better had I been able to devote more time to reading it and trying to enjoy it. I’m not against that idea- some books are harder to love than others, but are still worth loving if you put in the time. Maybe I’ll return to this at some point and I didn’t hate it, I just wasn’t as into it as I wanted to be.
(It’s especially telling that at “press time”, I truly can’t even recall reading this book, even with a head start of a few paragraphs. Not sure when I wrote these paragraphs relative to when I read it, but I’ve left it pretty much as is.)
You’ll like this if: you like other David Sedaris books, I guess? I would have said if you like self deprecation, but I fit that bill and didn’t love this one.
Happy reading!
carlyreads 