Rating: 
Summary: Just kept laughing.....
Review: I had requested this book as a birthday gift and received it. I had heard David on National Public Radio and thought he was fun and funny. I read the book and this collection of short stories just gave me hours of entertainment. After I finished reading it I kept telling people about it and the stories. Just goes to prove everyone has a strange family if you give it some thought. I found this a great pick-me-up book and would recommend it to anyone who just wants some light and fun reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Dose of Culture Shock
Review: I read this book right after reading Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself. It seems to me that there is a recent theme in new books that centers around humor at the expense of a person who is experiencing culture shock. Since this seems to be the recent theme, I suppose there's no harm in writing yet another book review with a theme of culture shock. Davis Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day combines two of the world's greatest cities- New York and Paris- with humor, all in one book that is incredibly hard to put down. The book is comprised of a series of humorous personal experience pieces, the first half of which take place in Sedaris' native New York City and the second half of which take place in Paris, where he moves to temporarily with his boyfriend Hugh. The first essay in Me Talk Pretty One Day sets the fast and funny pace continued throughout the rest of the book. It also sets the theme of "culture shock" in one's own county, because Sedaris comments on many experiences in his youth that made him feel alienated from other people in his own environment. In it, Sedaris discusses the speech impediment (aka "lisp") that he had as a child and still has to this day. The efforts of his speech teacher to correct the lisp were never successful, but Sedaris' descriptions of them are hilarious. He writes about the kids who were in his speech therapy class, saying, "None of the speech therapy students were girls. They were all boys like me who kept movie star scrapbooks and made their own curtains... 'One of these days I'm going to have to hang a sign on that door,' [my speech teacher] used to say. She was probably thinking along the lines of SPEECH THERAPY LAB, though a more appropriate marker would have read FUTURE HOMOSEXUALS OF AMERICA". Even when Sedaris writes about such mundane things as restaurant menus and crossword puzzles, or such serious things as Euthanasia, he is so funny and absurd that you begin to wonder if he takes anything about life in New York City seriously. However, just as you are wondering this, he sweeps you off to Paris to read his wacky comments on life there. Sedaris never did learn French fluently, nor did he do all the touristy things such as seeing the Louvre and the Eiffel Tour. Instead, he watched American movies in English in French theatres because "I've never considered myself an across-the-board apologist for the French, but there's a lot to be said for an entire population that never, under any circumstances, talks during the picture... I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed silence in an American theatre". If you have ever been to a foreign country, whether as an American who is embarrassed by the other American tourists that surround you, or as a member of a different nationality who makes fun of the American tourists, you will laugh along in complete understanding with Sedaris' comments on the two types of French that Americans speak: "the Hard Kind and the Easy kind. The Hard Kind involves the conjugation of wily verbs and the science of placing them alongside various other words in order to form such sentences as 'I go him say good afternoon'... The second, less complicated form of French amounts to screaming English at the top of your lungs, much the same way you'd shout at a deaf person or the dog you thought you could train to stay off the sofa". Me Talk Pretty One Day is guaranteed to give you an insider's look at culture shock in one's own country and abroad. It will also give you an insider's look at life in New York City and Paris. But best of all, it will give you this dose of culture shock (and if you've read I'm a Stranger Here Myself, make that your second recent dose), with a strong dose of humor. And that makes everything just a little bit better.
Rating:
Summary: Don't read this in public if you embarrass easily.
Review: I was sitting in Goodyear, waiting on my car, making a complete fool of myself hysterically laughing out loud as I read this. It's been a LONG time since a book has accomplished this. No, Sedaris' family isn't really all that different from most families. A little more twisted perhaps, but not all that different. What makes this book so funny is Sedaris' way of portraying these family events. I think that like most things in life, the event is not as entertaining as the re-telling of it. I think my favorite thing in the book is his description of the French vocabulary he developed. It sounds like something I would do. Great words, but completely useless in everyday life. I will admit that I was reluctant to read this book. I don't usually go for autobiographical type work, but I kept seeing the book in magazines and newspapers and finally heard an interview with Sedaris on This American Life. That's what cinched it for me. I figured that if he was that funny and quirky on the air, the book would be as well. I wasn't disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: David, A+
Review: Long a fan of Mr. Sedaris, I worried he might dry up and become repetitious. Not a chance. This new book contains some of his most brilliant, satirical writing to date. On offer are hysterical portraits of his foul-mouthed brother (You Can't Kill the Rooster) and his sister Amy (A Shiner Like a Diamond), adventures in elementary school speech therapy (Go Carolina), an especially viscious attack on performance art (Twelve Moments in the Life of an Artist), an observation of ugly Americans aborad (Picka Pocketoni), and an encounter with a sadistic French teacher (Me Talk Pretty One Day). Each tale is quite short compared to the chapters in his previous books, but perhaps this is a symptom of the more incisive quality of his current work. There are no weak numbers here, just generous helpings of humor, poignancy, and his usual pretty wit.
Rating:
Summary: I bought all his others...
Review: ...after reading this, Sedaris' latest book. Beyond funny, he is wicked, caustic, subversive and witty. Somehow, Sedaris manages to avoid that deadly cutesy-ness that wrecks most American humor collections. His arched detachment and deadpan delivery remind me of the best moments in Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work... Unlike Eggers, and others, who clobber you with emotional pain, poignancy lies below the surface with Sedaris. He never stoops too low or wrings emotion out of a scene. Wish I could write like this...awesome books, all of them.
Rating:
Summary: Find yourself a corner...
Review: somewhere in your abode and get comfortable. This book is so funny and clever that you will want to read it from cover to cover and and laugh to yourself. Then you will go back to Amazon.com and order all the other books by David Sedaris. Better yet, order a bunch for all those friends who need a rousing, cheerful read.
Rating:
Summary: Me love thith book
Review: This book is an absolute hoot! I laughed out loud, loudly, more times than I can count. His description of his dad, mom, siblings, pals and enemies are hilarious. I haven't laughed this much since reading Forrest Gump.
Rating: 
Summary: Proves that anyone can write a book these days!
Review: Sedaris is a talented writer; he has good sentence structure and uses creative analogies to bring across his humor. Although I am impressed by his ability to be funny in writing, I wasn't at all tempted to laugh out loud (as other review writer have said). It's not THAT funny. What I find disappointing about the book is not the writing itself, but the writer and the content. His life is not all that different from the average American. Yes, his experiences in France are beyond that of what most of us accomplish in our lives, but then just write about France and leave out the whole childhood bit; it's no more interesting than anyone else's.
Rating:
Summary: I'm still laughing!
Review: I have never recommended a book so highly, to so many people. I read this book on a long flight and I am quite sure others on the plane thought I was mentally retarded, emotionally unstable and totally socially unacceptable for my constant, hysterical laughter. Don't borrow it. Buy it! In fact, buy TWO! You will want a copy to keep and one to give a stubborn friend who refuses your repeated attempts to read them your favorite chapter. Definitely the funniest book I have ever so completely identified with.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional!
Review: Possibily Sedaris' BEST work in conversational masterpieces. So funny I couldn't read at times. I would recommend this book before Naked, as Naked was not as focused as Me Talk Pretty..
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