Ok, I cheated slightly on my one-book-a-week reading challenge. Because I didn't read as much as I had hoped during my spring break vacation, I took an opportunity to catch up by choosing a book I knew I could read in a weekend. Also, I was in the mood for something light.
David Sedaris is almost always laugh-out-loud, rolling in the floor funny, but I've enjoyed his other books more than Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. His humor always strikes me as poignant, an exercise in laughing through the tears. This collection of essays had the usual reminisces of painful moments of childhood, young adulthood and romantic disappointments, but the humor fell short.
In a few essays which he claims to offer for high school students to read as part of a forensics debate club exercise, Sedaris writes in the voice of an alternate, fictional persona. Some of these were completely off; I couldn't tell if they were meant to be funny, satirical, sad or angry.
Even when Sedaris is not at his best, he's better than most humor writers, so if you're a fan, you may be slightly disappointed with this book, but you'll still relish the few hours you'll get to spend with this master of observational wit.
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