Rating: 
Summary: the best way to experience David Sedaris
Review: To say that David Sedaris doesn't see the world the way that others do is a grievous understatement. He finds equal humor in the bizarre and the mundane. His wit can be both razor sharp and gentle as feather. He writes and says things that maybe you've thought about before and if you haven't thought about them before you'll certainly give them plenty of thought afterwords.Sedaris gift for storytelling is on display at its finest in this audio collection of holiday-themed stories. The most famous is, of course, "The Santaland Diaries", in which Sedaris relates in hillarious detail his experiences working as an elf at Macy's Santaland in New York. This piece is an American classic which should be compulsory reading for anyone who has worked a retail job during the holidays, not to mention anyone who has ever shopped a store during the holidays. Almost as good is "Front Row Center WIth Thaddeus Bristol" which skewers both a pompous theater critic and the sometimes attrocious children's holiday plays he's reviewing. In all, this collection contains six stories read by Sedaris himself, his sister Amy and actress Ann Magnuson. The different voices work well to set the tone for each story over the course of the tape, and the variety helps sustain interest which can be an issue with single reader audio programs. For many of us, the holidays mean laughter and tears. David Dedaris understands this and has given the world six of the finest tools with which to cope.
Rating:
Summary: If you only read one Sedaris essay...
Review: While all of the stories and essays in Holidays on Ice are good, the standout is clearly "The Santaland Diaries". I always think that if I laugh out loud while I'm reading something, then that by itself makes the book worth the price of purchase. I actually had to put the story down till I pulled myself together enough to resume reading it. "The Santaland Diaries" is a glimpse at our own attitudes and behavior during "the festive holiday season". Perhaps it is a clicheed sentiment (if a cynical opinion can be sentimental), but it is true that during the one time of the year when we should be celebrating peace and love for our fellow man, we behave like looters and scavengers in an orgy of mass consumption, ready to slit the throat of anyone who we percieve is trying to interfere with our quest to have a picture taken with a guy in a Santa suit. Sedaris illustrates this with biting humor and, of course, fiction is never as funny as what happens in real life. By the way, I'm pretty sure the story in "Dinah, the Christmas Whore" actually happened too...
Rating: 
Summary: Holiday Pick-Me-Up!
Review: So far I have only read, "Me Talk Pretty" by this author and I can say that it was one of my favorite books! I had never laughed out loud so hard at a book before. That book left me very eager to read another one of Sedaris books and over the holidays I picked up "Holidays on Ice" - - If you are looking for something to cheer you up during the stressful holiday times, pick up this little book by Sedaris. It's short but full of great short stories that will have you chuckling out loud!
Rating: 
Summary: Give until it Bleeds!
Review: To call David of Sedaris's sense of humor unique, might be an understatement. In "Holiday's on Ice." David delivers his wicked black humor with a Christmas theme that will doubtfully ever translate into a classic made for TV movie. These are certainly not heart warming, life affirming tales to read in front of the fire place with a nice glass of eggnog. To Sedaris, Christmas is an odd assortment of disgruntled department store elves, ..., tv executives, and suburbanites struggling with the "true" meaning of Christmas. "Give until it bleeds."
As always Sedaris uses his unique viewpoints, and sometimes personal experiences to create rich and creative stories. "Holidays on Ice" is a collection of his finest holiday based stories. While not as involving and complete as "Naked," or "Me Talk Pretty One Day." "Holidays On Ice" is a nice Sedaris for beginners book. Stories like "Santa Land Diaries,"
and "Dinah, The Christmas Whore" are as involved, and as well told as any other story in his longer works. "Holidays on Ice" proves once again that David Sedaris is one of the finest Humorists, and all around story tellers in America today.
Rating:
Summary: holiday hilarity
Review: In a word: hilarious. This book is not long, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in laughs. I took this slim volume on a flight to visit the family during the past holiday season, and it was just the thing to put me in the spirit. One story is formatted as a newsletter to the writer's family, and I thought I was really going to disturb all the passengers seated around me with my hysterical laughter that I tried so hard to subdue. I must say that you should avoid this book like the mistletoe at an office Christmas party if you don't go for dark humor. These short stories are not warm, fuzzy Tiny Tim scenes, but they do make you draw parallels with people you may know and (...*gasp!*...) even people in your own family. The price is right, and the time is now to buy this wonderfully funny book! I also recommend the other books by David Sedaris! You'll laugh until you cry.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't quite live up to all the hype
Review: By now just about everyone has heard that this is THE book to read during the Holidays as well as being the perfect little 'stocking stuffer' gift. In some regards this may be the case - especially with the brilliant first short story in this tiny tome, 'The Santa Land Diaries,' a hilarious memoir of Sedaris' experience working as a seasonal elf at Macy's. Unfortunately the remaining five stories fail to sustain the high level of excellence delivered early on making the remaining 2/3's of the book somewhat of a disappointment. If you are a fan of Sedaris or curious about all the hoopla surrounding his style of humor then this book is certainly worth your while, especially with its brilliant opening and the fact that it shouldn't take you more then an hour to read from cover to cover.
Rating:
Summary: Who brought the dip?
Review: World-famous erotic artists/literatti Je.X.x.X. Gordon and Sara de Holmes (a.k.a. "The Americans") recommended to me this wonderfully short little plopper of a writer, and I couldn't be happier to have taken the advice. As Gordon pointed out in a recent SF Bay-Area appearance - after he and De Holmes re-enacted the final love scene from the Marquis De Sade's lost novel, The Merit of being Meretricious - the contemporary literary repertoire has taken a disturbing turn with its obstinate stance of high-falootin'ness. I don't mean (nor did Je.X.x.X., to my knowledge) to bemoan high-falootin' literature *per se*, but the lit journal hegemony has seemingly chosen high-falootin' writers to the point of exclusion of all others.... Enter David Sedaris... With Sedaris, we finally have an author who can satisfy both the high-falootin' crowd and those with at least a marginal sense of humor [litmus test : if you laughed out loud (LOL'ed to you interweb addicts) during the encore of Madonna's Oklahoma City concert during the Papa don't Preach tour, you most likely have at least a marginal sense of humor.]. Here he is, a U. of Iowa graduate (or so Gordon says - I haven't checked for myself..) with a knack for post-modernistically meaningless sentences such as "We turned instinctively to our mother" (page 88, Holidays on Ice), a cleverly unoriginal first name that brings up images of infuriatingly incoherent short story authors, and cool pictures of himself smoking cigarrettes (probably either hand-rolled or European.. no, wait, probably the cheap brand that your retarded uncle buys..). Add to that formula a public-radio-worthy wittiness and a cute smile, and you've got yourself one of today's rising literary stars. Sedaris owns! Bring it!
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent and Witty
Review: David Sedaris NEVER fails to impress. His hit or miss style has a few misses now and then, but makes up for it with the rapid-fire delivery of hits. "Holidays On Ice" ranks with Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty One Day," Augusten Burroughs' "Sellevision," and Rikki Lee Travolta's "My Fractured Life." Intelligent humor. Very witty.
Rating:
Summary: Could no one's holiday season be worse than yours?
Review: If anyone thinks that they own the title of World's Worst Christmas Elf, buying this book is a must! The selections are short and sweet-bittersweet that is. I hate the holidays, I hate spending time in "lockdown" with my family, but this book is worth all of the suffering. Sedaris is a must from the fun of "Dinah, the Christmas Whore" to the gastly family newsletters every spunky family feels they must send me, "Season's Greetings to our Friends and Family". I picked this baby up at a white elephant grabbag and it is by far better than the pretzles my uncle chose or the chocolates selected by my mother. If anyone out there is a sarcastic, humorous, realist-this is the book to go for.
Rating:
Summary: well-written and funny
Review: Summary:
The book is a collection of short stories, some fictitious, some based on the author's actual experiences. Probably the most well known story is 'SantaLand Diaries', the author's account of his time spent working as an Elf in Macy's SantaLand. 'Based Upon A True Story' is about a TV producer who shows up at a Pentecostal church one morning hoping to convince one of the members of the congregation to sign a contract allowing him to produce her miraculous story. Apparently, the woman saved her son by transplanting one of her kidneys to him in their house. I'm assuming it was meant to be a fictional commentary on the ridiculous lengths TV executives will go to to get a story. 'Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family' is a wife's account of the havoc that has been created in their family due to the arrival of her husband's love child from his time spent in Vietnam. The love child, Quesan, arrives one day, unannounced, and proceeds to destroy the narrator's family. The story is written as though it were a holiday greeting card and is also fictitious. 'Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol' is a strange critique of elementary school drama productions. 'Christmas Means Giving' is a fictitious account of two families whose competition to give the most ends with the ultimate sacrifice - their lives. This is another social commentary, though its target isn't perfectly clear. 'Dinah, The Christmas Whore' is, I believe, a non-fiction account of when his sister brought home a co-worker, who also happened to be a prostitute, around the Christmas holidays. My Comments:
All of the stories are well-written, engaging, and entertaining. SantaLand Diaries was by far my favorite, but I think that is primarily because it isn't fiction. At least, I don't think it is fictitious, which leads to one of my criticisms of the book - the author never reveals when a story is fictitious or not. Of course, some are obviously fiction (Christmas Means Giving), but with others you can't be certain (Dinah, The Christmas Whore). It probably doesn't really matter if the stories are fictitious or not, but it would be nice to know. I'm also not sure what, if anything, I missed because I listened to this book on CD, but there was definitely one element of the CD that probably makes it better than the standard book - Sedaris's Billie Holiday style singing. On the CD he sings; you won't get that in the paper back. I was impressed by the author's candor about his personal life (once again assuming he is relating non-fictional stories). Though these 'secrets' are more extensively revealed in later books, I did find his fixation on soap operas to be a bit unsettling. Sedaris is also quite adept at producing one-line summations of points. For example, in commenting on how similar people are, the author ultimately concludes, "When all is said and done, it just comes down to fingerprints." As much as I'd like to disagree, I'm thinking just about everyone would want to disagree, which makes my disagreement moot. Though the stories jump all over the place and don't really seem to have a common thread, I don't think anyone can argue that Sedaris has a gift for telling poignant and humorous short stories. Not all of the stories make sense, but given that some of the most non-sensical stories are true, I don't know that making sense is the author's goal. Perhaps what Sedaris is really trying to do is illustrate the absurdity of life. If he is, he's doing a good job of it. The stories are a bit outlandish and the author is blunt, meaning they probably aren't for everyone, but I would definitely recommend this book.
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