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Summary: Beyond Funny! - No other book comes clothed...
Review: If I laughed any harder my gums would bleed. David - thanks.
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Summary: Honest and Hilarious
Review: Naked is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Sedaris has a gift for portraying rich characters--although this book is based on his life, I'm willing to bet that he's prone to hyperbole in some of the situations he describes--he'd *have* to be. :) Some other people have said say in their postings that they think this book is sad--I disagree. Sedaris chronicles his experiences without self-pity and states his choices without apology. The book is broken into individual vignettes of situations that seem to perfectly come together at the end. An excellent book--I look forward to more.
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Summary: Naked surprises the reader just as comfort begins to set in
Review: In Naked, David Sedaris takes to heart that most trite of writing advice, he is honest. This brings forward the entertaining quirks of his characters as well as the evolution of their development in crisp relief. Naked is a hilarious and brave account of growing up gay in America. While his characterizations and situations will strike you as surreal, they simultaniously ring true. At first the author's style may seem a bit of a challenge, but as the stories progress you will warm to it. I was grateful he had taken the extra effort to deliver such startlingly familiar situations in such a disarming and intimate way. Whether you are reading for the writing or for the story, Naked delivers in sensitive, tight prose that paint a startlingly clear portrait of life you will keep with you long after turning the last page.
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Summary: Small accident created
Review: I literally had to put this book down on a number of occasions because I was laughing so hard. I will never look at a bath towel in the same light after reading this brilliantly funny novel of dysfunctional family relations -- although the more I read, the more I realised that dysfunctionality is more the norm in ALL families.
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Summary: totallly hilarious
Review: sedaris is easily the funniest person writing in america today. I did not want this book to end, and stretched its reading out as long as possible. His writing is polished, tight and to the point, but every line is hysterical; every portrait of the people around him, destined to bring nods of empathy from his readers. After i finished this one, i ran out and bought his other two: you cannot have too much Sedaris.
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Summary: Sad and Depressing
Review: Although the book was well written and did contain many witticisms, I found the book to be sad and depressing. The stories of a lonely grandmother, psychiatric wards, and a father consumed with golf, left me feeling mournful for this family, and turned my thoughts to the darker side of life. Unfortunately, I was expecting a light-hearted look at an adolescent's growing pains that might have made me laugh at some of my own background and given me a connection to the author and other readers.
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Summary: If you've read Barrel Fever, this one's a bore.
Review: "Barrel Fever," Sedaris' first book, is original, daring, hysterically funny, and very queer. In "Naked," Sedaris has succumbed to an ailment common to humorists who've written one good book. Known in some circles as "Woody's Disease," the writer, having achieved some acclaim, imagines that readers should find windy diary accounts of his very ordinary personal experiences funny. Naked barely rises to amusing, much less funny. The savage queerness that gave the first book it's best lines has evaporated into vapid middle-class air. Don't be a codependent. You'd get more laughs out of a fifth reading of Barrel Fever than the first reading of this nakedly commercial offering.
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Summary: Naked on the NYC Subway!
Review: Beware! Naked is not for the easily embarrassed. This outrageously funny book tickled me to the point where I could not read it in public. There were too many times that I cracked the book on the subway home and had folks staring me up and down. At home...it was worse. Late at night with my better half sleeping soundly next to me I would bust out laughing and wake the dead. Sedaris weaves an acid humor with a blend of pathos. Just when you catch your breath and wipe your tears he wacks you again...I can't wait for more from this talented story teller.
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Summary: Hilarious, sad
Review: We see in the final, title essay that it takes a lot of courage to get naked on your first trip to a nudist camp; it's a while before the author can do it. But in every preceding essay of this agonizingly funny collection he has already embraced a far more courageous brand of exhibitionism: he has bared his soul, in all its scarred and pockmarked ignominy. It is risky enough for a novelist to give us an ugly protagonist; the essayist cannot quite so easily say, "It's a character! It's not me! I see the character's faults just as you do."Sedaris's saving grace is that he does see his protagonist's faults as clearly as we do--probably much more clearly, having lived with them for so long. He knows that when he describes the pathetic little lives of the ignorant, unsophisticated people it is his misfortune to come in contact with, we filter his assessments through the awareness that the existence he describes is at least as pathetic. And when we realize that those despised secondary characters are far more like the protagonist than he would ever admit, when we sense that they merit more tolerance than he can give them, we begin to tolerate the intolerant protagonist as well. Nakedness suddenly becomes him.
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Summary: Laugh-out-loud funny, but also toughing memoirs
Review: Reading this book in public was a bad idea. Mr. Sedaris has such a way of putting things that makes them seem almost too hysterical to be believed -- but they are indeed true. I would recommend the book highly to those looking for a read which is humorous, yet not without substance.
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