Rating: 
Summary: Never Laughed Harder
Review: Honestly, I blew my favorite Fume' Blanc through my nose! I've never laughed harder, nor related more to anything I've ever read. I called friends and family to read them entire chapters at the time in order to share and relive the hysteria!David Sedaris covers everything from the exotic quirks of our parents (though most of us may never repeat them,) to the bizarre fears, desperate attempts to conform and be excepted by the masses that none of us "really" identify with anyway, though we pretend. My most favorite thing about David Sedaris can only be appreciated if you've ever heard him talk. Reading this, I could hear the rhythm with which he speaks, with the enticing nasally pauses that kept me swinging impatiently from word to word, bracing for my next laugh! I could relate page to page and no one could have told it better!
Rating:
Summary: one of the funniest books I've read
Review: This is how funny this book is. I had read it 2, maybe 3 times before I ever attempted to read any part of it out loud to anyone. It's so funny I still couldn't make it past about the third paragraph without having to stop reading because I was laughing so hard. I stopped every other paragraph throughout, choking and snorting and gasping with laughter. Really it was a shameful performance on my part. But this isn't the best indicator of how funny the book is. What should really tell you how funny the book is is that even though mine was not exactly a smooth or even fully comprehensible reading, my listener still laughed. A lot. These essays are amazing. At times I thought that Sedaris has just had an unusually funny life filled with strange characters, that he has better material than the rest of us. But then I thought, shoot, I've taken language classes and spent time in a country where I didn't speak the language, and I didn't get even one really good story out of it. It takes talent to have seen the humor in many of these experiences, and talent to have preserved that humor on the page. Throughout the book Sedaris makes much of his drug-addled brain and mediocre intelligence, but he's clearly a genius. I'm reading it for about the fifth time now, and I'm still laughing too loud.
Rating: 
Summary: Laughed Out Loud...light and very entertaining.
Review: When my friend lent me this book, I really needed some light reading. Returning from a week long trip of taking care of a terminally ill family member, getting bronchitis, and the trade center bombing, I needed some humor on my plane ride back home. Being sick, extremely tired, and nervous, I found myself laughing out loud on the plane, to the point where I thought the people around me might think I was going nuts...I finally had to confess the book was so funny. David Sedaris has a great way of picking out the small things in our lives and making them very funny. They are endearing, I very much enjoyed this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and hilarious!
Review: Im only halfway through this book, but already, I can't
wait to finish it and read his others. I am very
excited to learn Mr Sedaris had several other books!
Very funny, love it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Quick Read
Review: Yes, most of these essays are quite funny but by the time I was halfway through, I found the author to be way too judgemental in his opinions. Others have commented on his "self-deprecating humor" but I found him to be self-absorbed and couldn't find any particular justification for his superior attitudes. I know that all the other reviewers of this book will disagree violently with me but I believe that there are far better satirical essayists out there.
Rating:
Summary: Very funny
Review: This was my introduction to Sedaris' wry sense of humor, and I was not disappointed. I had never heard of David Sedaris before picking up this book. No radio shows, no earlier works, nothing. I found myself laughing aloud at the descriptions of family life, world travel, and especially, the essay about crossword puzzles. In spite of this, I give it four stars because I felt the subject matter was more suited to a narrative than a series of essays. There are essays in this book that are out-of-place, and this tends to alter the tempo of the book. Still, I highly recommend this book to fans and newbies alike.
Rating:
Summary: You'll roar out loud -- absolutely HILARIOUS!
Review: CAUTION: "Me Talk Pretty One Day" is one of the FUNNIEST books you'll EVER read. You'll laugh out loud until you're embarrassed. You'll roar at wisecracks so biting and mean that you'll feel guilty. And if you read a certain (in)famous chapter you'll howl with laughter, pretend you shouldn't have read it -- and read it again...and howl.. again. The acid-pen Sedaris shot to fame reading his humorous stories over National Public Radio (and he still insisted on cleaning houses for money). The book's first half has stories on various subjects (family, art class, teaching writing, working for tough bosses etc.). The second deals with his experiences in moving to France with his lover. Sedaris spares no one -- not his father, sister, teachers, artists or himself -- from his scapel-sharp, insight-filled humor. Some wisecracks are instant classics. When he tries to
become an artist, dabbling in questionable performance art, he writes of artists: "Their artworks were known as 'pieces,' a phrase I enthusiastically embraced. 'Nice piece,' I'd
say. In my eagerness to please, I accidentally complimented chipped baseboards and sacks of laundry waiting to be taken to the cleaners. Anything might be a piece if you looked at
it hard enough." When a museum wants him to do some performance art it seemed "as though I should play hard to get, but after a moment or two of awkward silence, I agreed to do it for what I called 'political reasons.' I needed the money for drugs." In a chapter detailing the lives and deaths of his various pets: "When my mother died and was cremated herself we worried that, acting on instinct, our father might run out and
immediately replace her." When he's invited to teach: "I was clearly unqualified yet I accepted the job without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a tie and go by the name
Mr. Sedaris." And what a sadistic French teach told him:"Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section." In his most innovative "piece," a chapter called Big Boy, he describes his battle with (ahem) something he sees in a toilet. You'll roar while you read this short three page story
and hate yourself for reading it...and read it again. The book contains some adult language and adult situations. DESERVES MORE THAN FIVE STARS!!
Rating:
Summary: It Takes A Lot To Make Me Laugh!
Review: It truly takes a lot to make me laugh, but I learned not to read anything by David Sedaris in public. His skewed inside viewpoints of life are hilariously offbeat and ring true. So true, that you will be laughing out loud. Whether describing his amphetamine induced college "performance art" shenanigans or his childhood abuse by a speech therapist bent on taking glee in his curiously high-pitched lisp, Sedaris knocks you over with a literary feather laced with lead. Commentaries on New Yorkers, southerners or any other ethnic or regional folk are side-splittingly accurate. Always self-depracating, Sedaris is kind enough to include everyone in his hit-list of ridiculous human behavior. As a reference, David Sedaris' wack-job of a sister is also highlighted. It is no surprise that she went on to be a major contributor to Comedy Central's "Strangers With Candy". Don't be surprised however, if everyone you tell this book about has already read it.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK, WITTY MAN!
Review: This is a wonderful, delightful, witty book written in true Sedaris style. If you have every attempted to learn a foreign language, your laughter will resound as you read of the author's attempt to master the French language. As one who has learned French and Spanish, I thoroughly understand the mistakes that can be easily be made, especially when some words in each language are so similar but have entirely different meanings - whoops, sorry, wrong word, wrong language! What else can one possibly say about Sedaris, other than he is a master of humour. The essays told her are so down-to-Earth, and straight from the heart that the reader will find it difficult to put the book down until the last page has been read. Great book - one of his best and well worth a five-star rating, plus. What else can one say other than this is Sedaris at his finest.
Rating:
Summary: Baring your soul in boxer shorts and black socks
Review: Having just finished Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, I felt really let down. Not because the book was a failure in my eyes, but because it was over, and I had no more opportunities to laugh out loud,nudge people and say, "Hey, listen to this!" Which doesn't exactly buy me any points with anyone. The book is the best of its genre: ascerbic and witty and, as I used to tell my creative writing students, self-effacing. One can hardly point out the absurdity of others without showing his own, and Sedaris does such a clean, uncluttered job of it that my critical editor demon, who lives in the hope that she will get a good piece of prose to chew up and spit out, goes hungry, and I am fed just enough. He manages to tell just enough, enough to make the reader believe in the truth as stranger than fiction essays in the book. I was being treated like an adult, one with enough intelligence to see much more than is on the paper, trusted with intimate details of a life strangely lived. Sedaris is the kind of writer that makes you want to meet him, hang out with and talk to and listen and try not to be embarrassed at the fact that he is maybe oblivious to the social laws he is breaking by sitting in boxer shorts and black socks in an outdoor restaurant. And I want to do the same.
On a trip to England, my husband and I watched Miss Firecracker on the television in our room instead of joining in with the rest of the country's celebration of the 50th anniversary of D Day, which just happened to begin when we arrived, and which I was unaware of until getting off the plane. As we staggered into Heathrow, hundreds of signs were waving, hoping to connect with the great numbers of older couples,politicians, and entourages that had accompanied us on the flight. And on our return,a week after OJ drove down a California highway with a disguise and his passport, we were oblivious to the event and sordid details until we hit Boston. That's the kind of thing Sedaris helps us see--the embarrassment and confusion of coming into the room and knowing everyone is talking and then they suddenly turn to look at you and you want to think you don't know why but you have probably six reasons tucked away ready to jump up and own the enbarrassment and humiliation.
I loved this book, pure and simple, and hope others who avoid nonfiction like the plague, as I do, will give it a try.
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